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THE MEXICAN PEOPLE: THEIR STRUGGLE 
FOR FREEDOM 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/mexicanpeopletheOOguti 



The Mexican People: 
rheir Struggle for Freedom 



BY 

L. GUTIERREZ DE LARA 

Author of 
* Story of a Political Refugee" and "Les Bribones' 

AND 

EDGCUMB PINCHON 




Illustrated from Photographs 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 
1914 






Copyright, 1911},, hy 

DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 






f^^fs. 



PREFACE 

THIS book is deliberately given the title of "The Mexican 
People: Their Struggle for Freedom." We know that to the 
average mind Mexico and freedom seem almost antithetical 
terms; that is why we wrote this book. The Mexican people 
have democratic traditions as grand, pure, and sane as those of 
any race in the world. Like all peoples, they have suffered 
bitter oppression at the hands of their own master class, but 
unlike the majority of peoples their weakness has made of them 
the peculiar prey of the foreign exploiter as well. For a hundred 
years they have maintained the bloodiest, most heroically 
abandoned fight for their liberties, not only against their own 
master class but against that master class leagued with Spain, 
with the United States, with France, and with England. We 
have long wished to tell of this struggle. It constitutes one of 
the most exalted dramas of the social process. If by this book, 
wrought out amidst many difficulties, we shall awaken 
the spirit of brotherhood and understanding in the hearts of 
some, for the battling proletariat of Mexico, our work will not 
have been without reward. 

L. Gutierrez de Lara. 

Edgcumb Pinchon. 



CONTENTS 
V 

PAGE 

I. The Real Mexico 3 

II. The Genesis of the Mexican Master Class ... 7 

III. The Origin of the Mexican Agrarian Revolts . . 15 

IV. Political and Ecclesiastical Constitution of Mexico 

in the Colonial Period 19 

V. The Revolution of Independence 26 

VI. The First Empire . 61 

VII. The Republic 74 

VIII. The Presidency of Bustamante 87 

IX. The Texas War 100 

X. Clerical Prsetorianism and the Supreme Con- 
servative Power ... 121 

XI, The War with the United States 139 

XII. Clerical Intrigues for the Establishment of a 

Monarchy in Mexico 167 

XIII. The Ayutla Revolution 179 

XIV. The Constitution of 1857 201 

XV. The Upholding of the Constitution .... 220 

XVI. The French Intervention of 1861-1865 ... 233 
XVII. The Withdrawal of the French Troops and the 

End of the Empire ........ 257 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER . PAGE 

XVIII. Reestablishment of the Republic and the 

Constitution of 1857 265 

XIX. Agrarian and Political Democracy 27T^ 

XX. The Diaz Cuartelazo 289 

XXI. Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico 297 

XXII. The Dictatorship .312 

XXIII. The Railroads . 335 

XXIV. The Revolution of 1910-1914 341 

XXV. The Downfall of Madero ....... 351 

Epilogue. A Dispatch from the Front . . o » . . 359 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

What the Mexican People Are Fighting For Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

President Diaz and His Cabinet 20 

The Cost of the Battle of Ojinaga 21 

Map for the Period of Independence 28 

The Constitutionalists' Agrarian Plan 42 

Jose Maria Morelos 43 

Vincente Guerrero — President of Mexico in 1827 . . 68 

General Carranza Addressing a Crowd of Constitutionalists 69 

Native Maya Girls 84 

Ore Sorting 85 

Native Silver Smelter 85 

Mexican Types 116 

Chapultepec Castle 117 

Mexico Penitentiary 117 

Second epoch of the history of Mexico, showing places where 
war with the United States, Ayutla Revolution, and 

French Intervention took place 142 

The Famous Floating Gardens Near Mexico City . . . 148 

Federals 149 

Constitutionalists 149 

A Little Rebel Patriot .164 



X 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 

General Luis Terrazas Claims United States Protection . 164 

A Troop of Rurales 165 

A Battery of Mexican Federal Artillery 165 

The National Palace 196 

Constitutionalists and Their Families 196 

Chapultepec Castle 197 

Mexico City After the Bombardment of February, 1913 . 197 

General Carranza on Campaign 212 

Yaqui Soldiers 212 

General Zapata, Called "The Atilla of the South" ... 213 

Zapata and His Men 213 

Mexican Planter and Peon 246 

Cultivation of Hennequin, Yucatan 246 

The Toilers 247 

Constitutionalists 258 

Yaqui Rebels in Camp 259 

A Rebel Barricade in Juarez 259 

President Huerta and His Advisers 292 

Enrique C. Creel 293 

Jose Y . Limantour . 293 

Ramon Corral . . . . 293 

Rebel Scouts 308 

The People and War News 308 

General Pascual Orozco . 309 

General Pancho Villa 309 

Third epoch of the history of Mexico, showing places where 



ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

FACING PAGE 

farmers were disposessed of their lands .... 322 

Victoriano Huerta 340 

Venustiano Carranza 340 

Francisco Madero 341 

Porfirio Diaz 341 

The CHmax in the 1912-1914 Revolt 356 

Non-Combatants in the Bombardment of Mexico City . 356 

Non-Combatants from Ojinaga 357 

Federal Lines of Defence at Ojinaga 357 



THE MEXICAN PEOPLE: THEIR STRUGGLE 
FOR FREEDOM 



The Mexican People: Their 
Struggle for Freedom 

CHAPTER I 
THE REAL MEXICO 

IT IS commonly supposed that the Mexican race is made up 
of degraded half-castes, the joint product of the most backward 
nation in Europe (the Spanish) and the primitive savages of 
the southern portion of North America. None of the popular 
superstitions in regard to Mexico could be more falsely cruel. 
The Aztecs, Toltecs, Zapotecs, Mistecs, Mayas, and allied 
races which made up the entire population of Mexico at the 
time of the Conquest still constitute 60 per cent, of the popula- 
tion, and in spite of the fact that they have been compelled to 
adopt Spanish names and the Spanish language, this 60 per cent, 
of the nation — the working class of Mexico — still retain their 
ancient blood in all its purity. 

Again, these peoples are not Indians.* Modern archaeological 
and philological research bear emphatic witness to the fact 
that they are ethnologically as remote from the wild nomads of 
North America as are the so-called white races themselves. At 
the time of the Conquest they were in full enjoyment of a civi- 
lization greatly superior in many respects to that of Teutonic 
Europe, and certainly superior in every respect to that of the 



*The real Indians (akin to tKe North American Indians) form a small propor- 
tion of the population of Mexico. They reside for the most part in the hills and 
moimtains and are entirely outside of the main currents of Mexican politics. 



4 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Spanish nation which subjugated and enslaved them. Much, 
has been written, particularly by Spanish historians, of the 
barbarous religious practices of these native races. It is true 
that the degraded native priesthood, who founded their wisdom- 
religion in Mexico more than three thousand years ago, prac- 
tised human sacrifice as did the British druids. Even so, 
this deliberate blood sacrifice of the Aztecs was intrinsically no 
more inhuman than the martyr holocausts of Smithfield, the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or the complicated cruelties of the 
Spanish Inquisition. 

The magnificent architecture, splendid engineering works, 
exquisite craftsmanship, and sane social arrangements of these 
native races of Mexico (or Anahuac, as it was called in pre- 
Conquest days) mark them out as a people of ancient lineage 
and advanced culture. Compared with the Conquistadores 
they were enlightened, peaceable, and humane, and if the prac- 
tices of their priesthood (a small and degenerate section of the 
master class) bring a shudder to the modern mind, it must be 
remembered that the barbarity they betray is not an Aztec 
peculiarity, but the common barbarity of priestcraft in all ages 
and climes : it is an essential component of class rule wherever 
it be found, and as such it is a class characteristic — not a race 
characteristic. The Spanish Conquest was, in fact, the tri- 
umph of a nation brutal and ignorant, but warlike, over a highly 
intelligent, artistic people so long accustomed to peace as to 
know but little of arms. And thus the history of Mexico from 
the Spanish Conquest of the sixteenth century to the Revolu- 
tion of Independence in 1810 is the history of the domination 
of a small foreign element, backed, however, by a large foreign 
army, over a subjugated but intrinsically superior nation. 

At the time of the Revolution of Independence in 1810, when 
the history of Mexico as an independent political entity begins, 
there were thus two main classes in Mexican society divided by 
the deepest racial and economic distinctions: the pure Spanish 
aristocracy — the official and large land-owning class, con- 



THE REAL MEXICO 5 

stituting not more than 10 per cent, of the population, and the 
dispossessed and enslaved native class — the peons,* consti- 
tuting about 80 per cent, of the population. Between these two 
lay a third class, of mixed Spanish and native blood — the trad- 
ing and professional class constituting the remaining 10 per 
cent, of the population. 

This distinction of blood between the three economic divi- 
sions of Mexican society has remained, with some modifications, 
to the present day. Consequently, with the exception of the 
glorious period of the native supremacy beginning with the 
Ayutla Revolution of 1856, and ending with the accession of 
Diaz to power in 1876, the government of the country has been 
entirely in the hands of the Spanish and mixed Spanish element; 
and the chain of disasters which constitutes this hundred years 
of Mexican history is the direct outcome of the atrocities com- 
mitted by this element — the master class of the country — upon 
the native element — the working class of the country. 

To-day, of course, the Mexican people may be fairly regarded 
as a homogeneous race, but they cannot be regarded as a half- 
caste race in the general acceptance of the term, for 60 per cent. 
of the population still retain the ancient blood in all its purity. 
As for the mixed class the term half-caste is only applicable to 
them in the sense that they are the result of an alliance between 
a European blood and a superior Western blood — itseK par- 
tially European in origin. The superiority of this mixed class 
— essentially the Mexican intellectual class — over the pure, 
Spanish class, shows that the native blood is dominant, 
ar/1 that eventually it will overcome the evil legacy of Spanish 
blood in the Mexican nation. The Revolution of Independence 
in 1810, therefore, was the revolt of the native races against the 
power of Spain for national independence and possession of the 
land. Its issues, consequently, were both racial and economic. 



*Wliile the strict meaning of the word "peon" in Mexico is "farmhand," to- 
day its actual meaning is serf — the man held in bondage by indebtedness or 
other legal trickery 



6 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Finally and summarily the history of Mexico is the history 
of a class struggle in which the opposing classes, master class 
and working class, are of distinct bloods, traditions, and psy- 
chologies, with the balance of racial development entirely in 
favour of the latter. Thus all that we know of the evil that is 
Mexican is the product of a small, parasitic and originally 
alien section of the nation; and all that we know of the good 
that is Mexican (and the world in general knows little enough) 
— the arts, the crafts, the poetry, the gentleness and good faith, 
the heroic struggle for democracy — is the product of the working 
class native races. 

Bearing these simple basic facts in mind the maze of Mexican 
history may be threaded with ease. It is a record of profound 
significance and dramatic interest, the record of a struggle for 
racial expression and economic freedom on the part of an op- 
pressed people, unusually gifted, of abandoned valour, of won- 
derful human kindness and gentleness — a struggle carried on 
against the most bloodthirsty and depraved master class the 
world has ever witnessed. 

Since it is the Spanish and mixed Spanish master class which 
has controlled Mexico throughout the larger part of her modern 
history, it will be necessary for us to consider the origin of that 
master class, its psychology, and the economic, topographical 
and ethnological conditions with which it had to cope in the 
conquest and colonization of the country. We shall thus, as the 
first step in our study, find the key to that bewildering Satur- 
nalia of crime which constitutes Spain's gift to the land of the 
Aztecs. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GENESIS OF THE MEXICAN MASTER 
CLASS 

IN ORDER thus to investigate our subject from the roots 
we shall endeavour to trace the two distinct economic and psy- 
chological evolutions which have resulted in the present civili- 
zation of Mexico, on the one hand, and of the United States on 
the other. In this way we shall be able to take advantage of a 
number of illuminating comparisons between the two processes 
which will throw into relief the particular idiosyncrasies of the 
former. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL 

In the sixth century of the Christian era, Mohammed began 
preaching his doctrine to the Arabians; and a few years later 
Mohammedanism entered upon its bloody conquest of the 
Christian world. These two religions, Christianity and Mo- 
hammedanism, in their gigantic struggles for dominion in 
Europe and in northern Africa, converted the shores of the 
Mediterranean into one vast amphitheatre of slaughter. For 
over a thousand years the sun rose and sank on the carnage of 
the hosts of Islam and Christ, and millions of human lives per- 
ished by the sword before equihbrium between these two huge 
forces was obtained. This thousand years of combat pro- 
foundly modified — as might be expected — the psychology 
of the nations involved. In the case of Spain, which far more 
than any other nation in Europe bore the brunt of the fight, it 
evolved in the national character a distinctive idiosyncrasy which 



8 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

has remained the key to the Spanish and Spanish-American 
psychology to this day. 

In their setting forth to the conquest of the world the hordes 
of Islam first overran Asia Minor and the Valley of the Nile. 
They swept northward and westward along the southern 
shores of the Mediterranean until by fire and sword they 
had carried the word of the prophet into all those regions now 
known as Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco. Here, at the 
Straits of Gibraltar, but a narrow ribbon of water withheld them 
from the glorious subjugation of Spain, and through Spain, all 
Europe. Djeb Al Tarik, the Moorish general, at the head of 
his hosts walked into the strait, crying above the murmur of 
the waters: "Bear witness, God of Mohammed, that the con- 
quest of this land is but a small thing, but not my faithfulness 
to you." He advanced into Spain at the head of an army, con- 
tinually reinforced by the uncounted legions of Asia, and 
planted the Crescent in the very citadel of the Cross. In the 
meantime the Mohammedan conquests had stretched over 
Arabia, Palestine, Asiatic Turkey, and the lower Roman Em- 
pire. When at last Constantinople fell, the last stronghold of 
ancient Rome had become the appanage of the all-conquering 
Mussulman. Northward and westward the invading hordes 
swept on until they dominated the whole territory known to-day 
as the Balkans. 

All Europe was alarmed by that tremendous conflict. Al- 
ready, as we have seen, Spain and the lower Roman Empire 
lay in the clutch of Islam. The Spaniards, contesting every 
inch of the ground, were slowly driven backward into the moun- 
tains of Asturias, where Palayo and a handful of his followers 
hid themselves in the caves of Covadonga, still fighting for 
Christ and their country; while at sea the battleships of Spain 
maintained an equally dismal and stubborn resistance. 

It is well for us to examine the important modifications 
wrought in the economic and psychological development of 
the peoples of Europe by this thousand years of war, for 



THE MEXICAN MASTER CLASS 9 

it will supply us with the keynote of our historical in- 
vestigations. 

Standing at the gate of Europe, Spain, desperately fighting 
for her own preservation, was the bulwark which prevented the 
Moors from invading the northern, central, and western states. 
Her daily sacrifice of blood was the safeguard of her sister 
Christian nations. For in the whole eight hundred years dur- 
ing which the Islamic invasion was principally concentrated 
on her conquest, Spain was never actually vanquished. The 
mountains of Asturias constituted a line of defence beyond 
which the Moors were unable to penetrate, and Europe re- 
mained inviolate. This tremendous struggle for religion and 
country left an indelible impression on the psychology of the 
Spanish people. The passion for Catholicism and country be- 
came the very substance of their souls. It is easy to under- 
stand, then, that when, at the surrender of Boabdil in Granada, 
the Spanish people under Isabella and Ferdinand inflicted the 
last blow on the Moorish power in Spain, nothing short of the 
Inquisition could satisfy their spirit of burning fanaticism. The 
discovery of the New World at the same time opened to them a 
sphere for the expression of that lust of blood and conquest 
developed in them during their long, cruel struggle with the 
Moors. 

On the other hand, England, France, and Germany, sheltered 
behind Spain, had been spared all direct contact with the 
Mussulman. Indeed, the Holy War was of distinct service 
to these countries, in that it provided a beneficent sewer 
through which from time to time they were enabled to drain 
off from the body social the scum of their brigand kings, par- 
asitic noblemen, adventurers, and vagrants, both titled and 
untitled. Thus, the conflict which impoverished and perverted 
Spain performed a genuine social service for the rest of Europe, 
and permitted these more favoured nations to develop their 
arts, industries, and commerce in comparative peace. 

Wars there were, of course. But, whereas the intense re- 



10 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

liglous nature of the Holy War served only to pervert the Chris- 
tianity of Spain to bloody fanaticism, these lesser wars of the 
northern nations were either sheer economic conflicts or 
struggles between Catholics and reformed Catholics, which 
resulted in the purification, rather than in the perversion of 
the Christian faith among them; and in the long intervals of 
peace and prosperity their material progress gave rise in turn 
to a proportional development of political science, philosophy, 
and the liberal arts. Thus, while Spain was exhausting her best 
blood in the incessant strife with Mohammed, the rest of Europe 
conserved their best blood for the enrichment of society, casting 
only their social offal to the dogs of war. Truly Spain had be- 
come "her brother's keeper" at the cost of her own misery 
and retrogression. 

In these comparisons Italy occupies a place apart. In a 
position less exposed than that of Spain, and more exposed than 
that of the central and northern states, to the attacks of the 
Mussulman, she shared with the former the miserable conse- 
quences of the protracted struggle, but not nearly in the same 
degree. 

Thus we have in Europe two well-defined psychologies, 
Spanish and non-Spanish, which were to influence profoundly 
the history of the New Worlds, South and North. The first 
was to impart to the great Continent of Latin-America its own 
characteristic lust of blood, despotism, and intolerance; and the 
second, which, owing to the small part played by the Latin 
peoples in the colonization of the United States and Canada, 
was essentially a Saxon psychology, was to impart to the great 
Continent of North America its own characteristic love of peace, 
justice, and industry. 

By the light of the foregoing comparisons we have been able 
to investigate the genesis of the Mexican master class. Later 
we shall examine that tremendous tragedy which constitutes 
Mexico's history — the unceasing struggle of the native work- 
ing class against this foreign master class, for human liberty and 



THE MEXICAN MASTER CLASS 11 

democratic institutions. The most backward and least fav- 
oured of the nations, her brilHant Aztec intellect tinged with 
the Iberian fire, has not suffered her to rest content in degrada- 
tion and stultification; but has impelled her to make almost 
inhuman efforts to reach the rank of the most advanced nations 
of the world. It is this great struggle for human liberty and 
national development which is the one continuous and consist- 
ent force beneath all her upheavals so often characterized by the 
unreflective as sporadic explosions without aim or meaning. 

ECONOMIC AND ETHNOLOGICAL 

While England in the north was engaged in the conquest and 
colonization of the territory afterward known as the "Thirteen 
Colonies," and the eastern part of Canada, Spain was occupied 
in the south in the conquest of Mexico and South America. 
The history of the conquest of Mexico and of its subsequent 
development is a type of all Latin- American history, just as the 
history of the Thirteen Colonies is the type of all Saxon- American 
history. In drawing our comparisons, therefore, between the 
colonial evolution of the Spaniard and the Saxon we shall con- 
fine our considerations to Mexico on the one hand, and the 
Thirteen Colonies on the other. 

First, let us glance at the respective physical conditions with 
which the Saxons and the Spaniards had to cope in their settle- 
ment of the New World. In the area now known as the Thir- 
teen Colonies the Saxon colonists found themselves in possession 
of an immense area of fertile land, level, easily worked, 
and ready to respond to the roughest cultivation with bounte- 
ous crops. The snowy mantle of winter protects these lands 
from the frost and leaves them at the spring thaw, warm, moist, 
and in ideal condition for the rapid and vigorous sprouting of 
seed. Immense rivers — the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, St. 
Lawrence, and others — cross the land in divers directions, 
sufficiently deep and slow moving to permit the ready use of 



12 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

their waters for navigation. In addition to these great assets 
of fertile land, and efficient communication and transportation, 
the settlers were enriched by the discovery of great deposits 
of coal — the food of machinery. Here, then, were combined 
all the conditions most favourable to the development of a rich 
and varied agriculture and industry. 

In Mexico, on the contrary, the land is not level, but inter- 
laced and fretted throughout its length and breadth with 
mountain ranges, which constitute a serious hindrance to com- 
munication and transportation, and are perfectly useless for 
agriculture. The valleys between these mountain ranges are 
uneven and arid. There is no snow in winter, and consequently 
no snow-water in the spring; in summer the rains are scarce, 
and even in the rainy season the tempestuous torrents which 
rave down the arroyos are too deeply channelled for use in irri- 
gation. As for navigation, there is not a mile of navigable 
river in all Mexico. Under such conditions as these, the land, in 
colonial times, could scarcely provide for its inhabitants, much 
less produce — as was the case in the Thirteen Colonies — that 
accumulation of capital necessary for further development. 

Again, another powerful differentiating factor in the evolution 
of the two civilizations is to be found in the immense difference 
existing between the aboriginal races which they respectively 
displaced and absorbed — between the haughty nomadic 
hunters of the north, barbarous tribal communists, among whom 
slavery and subjection were unknown; and the gentle, intellect- 
ual Aztecs, Toltecs, and Mayas of the south, not Indians at 
all, but highly civilized peoples of Aryan origin — feudal agri- 
culturists, among whom a mild form of serfdom had existed for 
centuries. 

In spite of the utmost effort on the part of the Saxon invaders 
to enslave the Indian, he remained free. A nomad, a hunter, 
living in brotherly equality with his fellows, he either succumbed 
to the bullets of the white man in desperate defence of his hunt- 
ing grounds, or retreated to remoter fastnesses. Slavery, sub- 



THE MEXICAN MASTER CLASS 13 

jection, restraint, were all utterly against his nature. The 
Saxon colonist, unable to possess himself of slaves, was com- 
pelled to perform his own labour; and, therefore, confined himself 
to the appropriation of just as much land as he could con- 
veniently cultivate unaided. Of what use was more to him? 
His fellow-colonists, his equals on the physical, social, and eco- 
nomic fields, were by no means fit subjects for servitude. Hence 
arose, by economic necessity, a relative agrarian democracy, in 
which a very large proportion of the colonists became owners of 
as much land as they could personally cultivate. It was not 
till a later period that the introduction of the negro destroyed 
to some extent this democratic equilibrium.* 

In Mexico, on the other hand, the invading Spaniards found 
not barbarism, but a feudal civilization, private ownership of 
land in place of communal ownership, and serfdom in place 
of nomadic liberty. With fire and sword they laid waste a 
civilization in many respects superior to their own; and the 
fighting element among the natives, once subjugated or exter- 
minated, the serfs fell perforce into the most abject servitude 
to their new masters. Thus the Spanish colonists in Mexico, 
far from being limited, like the Saxon colonists in the north, 
to as much land as they could personally cultivate, were en- 
abled to appropriate immense tracts, limited in extent only by 
the number of natives whom they could force to perform serf- 
labour for them. Through the private ownership of these 
immense estates and the corresponding servitude of the toilers 
of the soil, there arose in Mexico an economic system closely 
resembling the feudal system then predominant in Europe. 
But, while in Europe and all the European colonies capitalism 
has superseded feudalism, in Mexico, feudalism still remains to 
a large extent the economic foundation of the country. Now, as 
then, Mexico is a country of great land-owners and landless peons. 

*We take into account only the ordinary private land owners, and not the ex- 
ceptional feudal land holdings established by a few privileged individuals and 
chartered corporations. 



14 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

To this contrast of the respective natural conditions met by 
the Saxon and the Spaniard in their colonial enterprises must 
be added the psychological differences of the two races them- 
selves. In freedom from the pressure of the Asiatic hordes the 
Saxon nations had achieved a well-developed civilization char- 
acterized by a purified form of faith, and a high degree of re- 
ligious tolerance. Spain, on the other hand, brought to Mexico 
an arrested civilization, and a fanatic Romanism embittered 
and perverted by the fierce conflict with Islam. The Holy 
Inquisition set its bloody fangs in the heart of the people; per- 
secution, fire, and torment quenched all liberty of conscience, 
and the soul of Mexico lay degraded and shackled as even her 
body. The ignorant priests went so far in their hatred of all 
enlightenment that emanated from any source other than the 
Vatican, that they burned to ashes the invaluable library in 
the Imperial Palace of the Aztecs, destroying at a blow the rec- 
ords of a culture beyond their comprehension. 

Thus, summing up our comparison between the two colonial 
evolutions, we have : in the north, Nature rich and abundant in 
her gifts; in the south. Nature arid and niggardly; in the north, 
a vast field for labour and a plentiful reward for the labourer; 
in the south, labour without reward to the many, idleness and 
luxury for the few; in the north, an agrarian democracy in which 
a very large proportion of the males shared, to some extent at 
least, in the administration of society; in the south, a despotic 
feudalism, under which the administration of society remained 
in the hands of the few, utterly without responsibility to the 
many; in the north, the peaceable habits of the Saxon and a 
spirit of cooperation; in the south, the lust of blood and selfish 
individualism which characterized the perverted Spanish psy- 
chology; and, finally, in the north, religious tolerance and gen- 
eral intellectual enlightenment ; in the south, religious bigotry and 
intellectual darkness. On these two foundations have arisen 
what we know to-day as the United States, and modern Mexico. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ORIGIN OF THE MEXICAN AGRARIAN 
REVOLTS 

WE HAVE examined the deep roots of Mexico's history. 
Let us now investigate the immediate causes of her modern 
social movements. To those unaccustomed to view the his- 
torical process as an unbroken, evolving continuity, it may seem 
a strange assertion that the agrarian revolt which gloriously 
founded the democracy of America, and the agrarian revolt 
which is now agitating Mexico, are the true and lineal descen- 
dants of the great agrarian revolt which arose in England in the 
fourteenth century. But such is the fact. In England — the 
home of all the great mediaeval and modern revolutionary move- 
ments — broke out in 1381 A. D. the first powerful uprising of 
the peasantry against the feudal system. John Ball, a bold 
priest of those times, marched up and down the country arous- 
ing the people to their first vision of democracy with his famous 
quip: 

' ' When Adam delved and Eve span 
Who was then the gentleman? " 

His harangues to the peasantry sound curiously like the har- 
angues of another bold priest four centuries later, the heroic 
Hidalgo, who first aroused the democratic spirit of Mexico. 

"My friends," said Ball, "things will never go well in England 
till there shall be no longer lords or masters, till we be our own 
masters, as much as they are now. What right have they to 
keep us in bondage? How ill they use us! Are we not all 

15 



16 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

descendants of Adam and Eve? Our masters are clothed in 
velvet and ermine, while we must be content with the poorest 
rags! They have wines and spices and fine bread, and hand- 
some houses, while we have only rye and water for food and 
drink, and we must brave the wind and rain in the fields. Let 
us go to the King, who is young, and tell him of our servitude, 
and let us tell him that we must have it otherwise, or we shall 
find a remedy for ourselves." 

The rebellion was suppressed with terrible slaughter by the 
feudal aristocracy of the time, but it was the first spark of the 
fire destined ultimately to envelop the world. A century and 
a half later the peasants of Germany arose likewise in revolt 
against their feudal oppressors, and the dawn of a great era 
of widespread revolution seemed close at hand. Two powerful 
agencies, however, combined to divert, retard, and stifle the 
power of this tremendous awakening: the Reformation under 
Luther, and the colonization of America. 

In regard to the former we quote the following passage from 
"Riforma e Rivoluzione Sociale" by the great Italian sociol- 
ogist, Labriola : 

The German peasants, reduced to the condition of beasts through centuries 
of untold oppression, made their masters suffer all that savagery which the feu- 
dal regime had developed in them, without pity for sex, state or condition. As 
they had been made by their masters, so did they act. Luther, who was the 
mouthpiece of the master class, before they gathered their great armies to crush 
the insurrection, used the prestige of his name to reduce the peasants to obedi- 
ence, hurling at them his pamphlet " Wider die morderischen und rauberischen 
Rotten der Bauer, " which is considered the code of the future oppression. Lu' 
ther, fuming with rage before the revolt of the peasants, called down upon them 
the wrath of God and the revenge of men. "This ass needs to be whipped," he 
said, "and the people to be shaken with violence." And he did not hesitate to 
compel the princes to sink their petty differences and combine to show a resolute 
front to the revolt, and to suppress it without mercy or consideration. The 
princes obeyed him. They combined and crushed the rebellion. Then fol- 
lowed the most dreadful reprisals that the imagination can conceive, dwarfing, 
indeed, the terrible ravages of the Roman emperors upon the Christians." 

The second great cause of the suppression of this widespread 
agrarian revolt in Europe was, as we have said, the discovery 
and colonization of America. From the day when the news 



ORIGIN OF AGRARIAN REVOLTS 17 

spread far and wide concerning this great New World, where was 
neither master nor lord nor priest; where the land was free as 
heaven, and all were equals, the sturdy revolutionary element in 
Teutonic Europe, as well as to some extent in France, began 
to stream steadily westward. The people were thus diverted 
from the slow and bloody work of reconstructing the society 
in which they found themselves, to the easier and more hopeful 
path of emigration. For three hundred years a strong tide of 
the more enterprising spirits who leavened the lumpish mass of 
European peasantry poured into the Thirteen Colonies. A 
more perfect safety-valve for the revolutionary agitation of the 
Old World could scarcely be imagined. 

In the logic of events these colonists, still haunted by the fear 
and hatred of oppression, could not do less than throw off for- 
ever even the formal suzerainty of Europe. The revolution of 
1776 which brought into being the agrarian democracy of the 
United States, although it was instigated by the commercial 
classes was but the glorious culmination of the old peasant re- 
volts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England and 
Germany. But the revolutionary fire did not stop there; it 
leaped back again to Europe, where it had been all but extin- 
guished in earlier days, and blazed more gloriously still in the 
French Revolution, which drove the big land-owners from power, 
and established the beginnings of an agrarian democracy in 
France. 

From the spirit of this great revolution — a classic example 
of the agrarian revolt, since at that time the industrial problem 
had not yet arisen to complicate the issue — there came forth a 
philosophy that was intensely expressed by the three principles 
that were to provide the battle-cry of the future revolutionary 
movements of the world: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. This 
philosophy, crossing the Pyrenees into Spain, was quickly ab- 
sorbed by the Intellectuals and applied by them to the ripe 
revolutionary condition of the Spanish people. In the upheaval 
that followed, the famous constitution of 1812 was proclaimed, 



18 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 






the first in the history of Spain to recognize the power of the 
common people as the true governing force of the nation, and 
the first to reduce the King from his position as ruler in divine 
right to that of ruler in the name of the people. ■ 

Wrapped in the parchments of the Holy Inquisition itself, 
hidden in the leaves of prayer-books, the new doctrines rapidly 
spread from Spain to Spain's great colony — Mexico. Under 
the bitterest anathema of Rome they yet made their way to the 
seminaries and universities. The students learned the new 
doctrines in secret, and relishing the forbidden fruit, mixed them 
with the theological dogmas that were the only canons of the 
civil and economic life of the time. When, finally, these stu- 
dents left the discipline of the schools to enter life as priests, 
lawyers, teachers, and writers, they became the ardent propa- 
gandists of the new ideas. Particularly was this true of the poorer 
class of priests; for their daily routine, more than that of any 
other profession, brought them into close contact with the 
slavery of the common people. 



CHAPTER IV 

POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTION 
OF MEXICO IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

DURING the three hundred years of the Spanish regime in 
Mexico, the executive head of the government was the vice- 
king, or Virrey — an appointee of the King of Spain. This 
Virrey was assisted by an Audiencia, or legislative body, and 
by a consultative body with judicial functions, which consti- 
tuted the Supreme Court of Appeals. The provincial govern- 
ments were similar in constitution, having as an executive head a 
corregidor, or governor, appointed by the Virrey, with the ap- 
proval of the King, assisted by a provincial Audiencia. In 
political life, as in ecclesiastical life, the Church of Rome was 
omnipotent, and a majority of the Virreys were ecclesiastical 
officials. The few of them who were not, were army officers 
who represented the interests of the Church quite as efficiently 
as did the ecclesiastics themselves. Throughout the entire 
colonial period, terminating with the independence, no matter 
what interest the Spanish Government itself might take in the 
protection of the peasants, the colonial government worked 
solely in the interests of the big land-owners, of whom the 
Church itself was the chief. 

Another characteristic feature of the Spanish regime in Mex- 
ico was the avaricious jealousy exhibited by the Spanish Gov- 
ernment in regard to the Mexican colonial trade. Only Spanish 
vessels were allowed to visit the three ports in the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, the one exception being a vessel that came once a year to 
the port of Acapulco from China, laden with rich Chinese silks 

19 



20 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE j 

and general merchandise. In view of such a condition of affairs 
— an autocratic and unenhghtened government, and complete 
isolation from the more advanced nations of the world — it is 
not surprising that we find Mexico, at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, in much the same miserable condition as 
characterized the times of the Conquest. 

Society was divided into three strata. At the top stood the 
privileged Spanish class of big land-owners, comprising the _ 
Church and Aristocracy. This class dominated the entire ■ 
life of the country, and used the government and army merely 
as a means to maintain their supremacy. Far below them lay 
the small and insignificant middle class of mixed Spanish and 
native blood — the intellectuals, petty professionals, and merch- 
ants, who crawled at the feet of the wealthy in the ever-present . 
fear of being trampled upon and flung into the common servi- 
tude. Nevertheless, the members of this class, ambitious, and 
eternally renewing the struggle to raise themselves to a loftier 
and more secure position, were nourishing in their bosoms the 
germs of a future revolution. Far below the middle class again, 
and in the deepest misery and degradation, were the toilers of 
the soil — the natives, Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayas, and other allied 
races — immensely outnumbering the two other classes, but 
powerless in their ignorance and disorganization. 

The Church itself comprised the secular and regular clergy. 
The entire country was covered with convents and monasteries, 
filled with friars and nuns, for the most part living in idleness 
and debauchery on the labour of the wretched serfs. At the 
time of the Conquest the King of Spain had given to the various 
religious orders in Mexico great grants of land called "Mer- 
cedes," as ecclesiastical estates for the erection and support of 
convents and monasteries. The grant further empowered these 
religious orders to christianize and enslave the native popula- 
tion located on these lands. To enslave the body it is necessary 
first to enslave the mind. The Spanish priests found it an easy 
matter to inspire the fear of hell-fire in the superstitious na- 







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THE COLONIAL PERIOD ^1 

tives, and to inculcate a proper obedience to themselves as the 
sole representatives of God upon earth. The more vigorous or 
rebellious minds were taken care of by the Holy Inquisition, and 
in a comparatively short time the system, on which the Church 
in Mexico was to found her fabulous wealth and power, was in 
perfect working order. Not content with their enormous orig- 
inal land grants, the priests continually used their power to 
withhold extreme unction from the dying, as a means of ob- 
taining deathbed inheritances. By these and similar practices, 
the Church during the three hundred years of the Spanish regime 
in Mexico became the supreme economic power and the chief 
land monopolist in the country. 

"With the exception of a certain amount of land owned by 
the aristocracy, almost all the valuable lands of Mexico were in 
the hands of the Church, and even those not so owned were 
under heavy mortgage to her, or were crushed with tithings and 
taxes which went into her coffers." ("Mexico a traves de los 
Siglos," Vol. IV, p. 317.) 

"The clergy, mainly the higher officials, had accumulated 
and taken out of circulation an incalculable quantity of riches. 
In 1809 the tithings of six bishops amounted to the sum of 
$2,500,000 — immense wealth in those days. There were bish- 
ops and archbishops whose salaries amounted to more than 
$100,000 a year. Indeed, a careful estimate of the revenue of 
the Church just previous to the War of Independence reveals 
the enormous figure of $50,000,000 a year." (Ibid.) 

At the time of the Independence the number of friars, nuns, 
and secular clergy had reached such proportions as to consti- 
tute a deadly menace to society. Baron von Humboldt gave 
conservative estimate of no less than twenty thousand of them 
in various parts of the country, and of these, Mexico City alone 
held twelve hundred. Nor was the Church, as an offset to her 
enormous plunderings, performing any useful function in Mex- 
ican society. With the very rare exception of a member en- 
gaged here and there in philanthropic work, this vast army of 



22 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

parasites was delivered up to a life of selfish indulgence, and, 
to a large extent, of unspeakable vice. 

"During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many 
secular clergy had come to Nueva Espana (the colonial name 
for Mexico) in search of fortune, having little prospect of success 
in their native country. These were, for the most part, mere 
adventurers, vicious, and a cancer in the body ecclesiastic. 
The natives among the seculars, with a few exceptions, had also 
been contaminated. Of this we have abundant evidence in 
papal bulls and royal orders, in the reports of several viceroys, 
among whom one was a distinguished prelate, and in the edicts 
of the Inquisition. Violation of the vows of chastity, impeding 
the administration of justice, trading against express prohibi- 
tion, manufacturing prohibited liquors, collecting excessive 
fees, and defrauding the Crown were common practices; and, 
indeed, some of their deeds were so scandalous that decency for- 
bids their relation. . . . But it must be confessed that the 
regular orders also contained unworthy members, men who 
shrank from poverty and discipline, some of whom were vain, 
covetous and profligate, and who looked upon their mission 
in the New World only as an opportunity to gratify their de- 
sire for a life of ease and pleasure. . . After the spiritual 
conquest of Mexico it was an easy matter for these ecclesi- 
astics to have themselves assigned to parishes which be- 
came, in spite of an outward show of religion, mere hotbeds 
of vice, even the sacred act of confession being profaned. 
These scandals in morality were most noticeable in the 
eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century, at the 
seats of some of the dioceses and small towns.'* (Bancroft, 
*' History of Mexico," Vol. Ill, pp. 681-682.) 

" With regard to the private life of the friars it cannot truth- 
fully be said that it was in keeping with the abstinence required. 
The contrast between them and the earlier missionaries is strik- 
ing. Many indulged not only in the pleasures and luxuries 
of the laity, but also in their vices. Instead of abstemiousness. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 23 

feasting and carousing prevailed among them, as among the 
secular clergy; instead of humble garb and bearing, pompous 
display in embroidered doublets and silken hose of bright colour; 
instead of study and devotional exercises, dice throwing and 
card playing over which the pious gamblers cursed and swore 
and drank. Immorality too often usurped the place of celibacy, 
and murder that of martyrdom." {Ibid, Vol. Ill, p. 708.) 

"While convents and friars thus multiplied, religious sister- 
hoods increased in a corresponding degree. Over four hundred 
were already established by the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It would be supposed that these religious establishments, 
designed as peaceful retreats for females, would be free from 
strife, but truth compels me to say that the nuns were as con- 
tentious as the friars. All the orders, in fact, incessantly en- 
deavoured to shake off the control exercised over them by the 
provincial prelates and free themselves of their supervision." 
(/6^(^,Vol.III,p.710.)* 

Second only to the Church in power and extent of land mon- 
opolization was the Spanish landed aristocracy of Mexico. For 
the most part this aristocracy consisted of the scions of the 
Spanish nobility, or their descendants, who had come to the 
colony bearing "Mercedes," or land grants, from the King. In 
course of time many of them married the daughters of the native 
chieftains, thus founding a genuine Mexican aristocracy of blood. 

At the time of the Independence the basic wealth of the 
country — the land — was accumulated in a very few hands. 
Some families, descendants of the Conquistadores, were in pos- 
session of real estate as large as a province, ceded to them by 
the King of Spain, and entailed as the property of the Church. 
Wealthy merchants and mine-owners also bought vast estates 
and erected them into dukedoms, marquisates, and counties, 
entailed by the patents of nobility bought from the King. And 

*We quote Bancroft somewhat more liberally than the Spanish and Mexican 
historians of this period, not only because he here shows himself impartial, pains- 
taking and accurate, but because it will be easier for English speaking readers 
to verify the quotations made. 



24 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

all these vast fertile estates were tilled by the wretched native 
serfs, whose wages never at any time reached the sum of twenty 
cents a day, but who were, nevertheless, heavily taxed both by 
Church and State. 

To the parasitic Church and Aristocracy and Government 
must be added yet one more burden to the bowed back of the 
peon — the parasitic Army. Throughout the entire period of 
the colonial regime, lasting some three hundred years, the 
strength of the standing army remained in the neighbourhood of 
thirty thousand men. Yet Mexico was a very peaceful colony. 
The privileged classes were well contented with their condition, 
and the peons were too broken, ignorant, and depressed to give 
any trouble. The reason for such an absurdity as this army, 
with one officer to every two privates, is to be found partly 
in the determination of the Church to guard against any possi- 
ble retaliation on the part of the people, and partly in the 
Spanish system of primogeniture, which sent all the younger 
sons of the Spanish nobility into Mexico to fasten themselves 
on the military pay-roll. With no war or possibility of war to 
absorb their energies, this military class outvied the clergy in 
debauchery and perversion. 

Such was the condition of the Mexican people during the 
Spanish regime. A nation of only six millions supported a vast 
host of alien parasites and plunderers without relief or hope of 
relief. *' The conquerors distributed the natives amongst them- 
selves as serfs, and although the admirable 'Legislacion de 
Indias' tried hard to remedy such a state of affairs, it was im- 
possible to prevent the Spanish priests from submerging the 
natives in superstition, or to prevent the Spanish land-owner from 
forcing the natives to work for wretched wages and under de- 
grading conditions." (Gustavo Baz, "La Vida de Juarez," p. 14.) 

"According to another authority, the unhappy Mexican 
people were distributed as slaves, used as beasts of burden, 
subjected to the most brutal treatment, and were often the 
food of their masters' dogs. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 25 

"In three years no less than four hundred thousand of 
them died through this iniquitous treatment. Our hiero- 
glyphic scriptures, glorious monuments of civilization, in which 
are contained the records of our history and origin, were de- 
stroyed by the barbarous Bishop Zumarraga, emulous of Omar 
and worthy imitator of Cardinal Jimenez." (J. J. Baz, in a 
speech delivered in 1859.) 

Much has been written anent the paternalism of the Church. 
"They made the natives toil for them without payment," says 
Bancroft. (Vol. 13, p. 704.) The whole history of the period, 
even when recorded by Catholic writers, goes to show that the 
Church exceeded the aristocracy and military in her brutal and 
cynical treatment of the unhappy native peons. For these 
toilers of the soil there were no schools. If they fell ill — and 
that was often enough ^ there were for them but two or three 
miserable hospitals in all Mexico, and in these they did but 
only die of starvation and mistreatment. Their sole pastimes 
and recreations were the Church festivals, where under cajole- 
ment or threat they yielded up their scanty savings to the 
priests for mass-payments. If they escaped from the priests 
with a few centavos, there were still the drinking-places, also 
kept by the priests where the vilest liquor was sold, and the 
peons sank in the mire at the end of their long-anticipated holi- 
day, robbed and drugged. 

Not only did the clergy enjoy this vast economic and spir- 
itual power, but also certain privileges which protected them 
from the reach of such civil law as there was at the time. These 
privileges, which were termed "fueros eclesiasticos," exempted 
the priest, the friar, the nun, and the military from any retribu- 
tion at the hands of the civil courts for any crimes committed 
by them. On the other hand, offences against the Church 
committed by civilians were punished with the utmost severity. 
We shall find these iniquitous fueros playing a prominent part 
in the history of Mexico. 



CHAPTER V 
THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 

BY THE year 1808 conditions in colonial Mexico had become 
so intolerable for the great mass of people that revolutionary 
symptoms began to appear simultaneously in all parts of the 
country. The Intellectuals, as we have seen, were already 
deeply imbued with the doctrines that had emanated from the 
French Revolution — doctrines that in the presence of the des- 
perate wretchedness of the common people pointed in letters of 
flame to the necessity of a radical change in the economic and 
political system of the times. 

Some mild reformers of the wealthy class were already moot- 
ing the question of independence from Spain, prompted chiefly 
by their discontent with the unwritten law which preserved all 
the higher appointments in the colonial government for Spanish 
court favourites. The movement, however, lacked virility, and 
never gained strength until, at a later day and under very 
different conditions, the common people — rising in independent 
revolt, Aztec against Spaniard, landless peon against landlord — 
were tricked into giving it support. The Virrey Iturrigaray 
himself was in the conspiracy. He planned to call to Mexico 
City from all parts of the country such delegates as were known 
to be in favour of the step, and by the aid of this packed con- 
vention to proclaim the independence of Mexico and establish 
a new constitution. The conspiracy bid fair to be completely 
successful, for great care was taken that the delegates should 
include only those malcontents who resented the exactions of 
Spain and the exclusion of the native aristocracy from the higher 
official positions. The plot, however, was discovered before it 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 27 

had time to ripen, and the higher officers of the Church and Army 
who preferred the status quo promptly seized the Virrey and 
dispatched him under guard to Spain, at the same time arresting 
and imprisoning his fellow-conspirators. A number of army 
officers had joined the plot, but the moment it was discovered 
they were quick to recant their revolutionary faith, and to affirm 
their loyalty to Spain and the government. It was these same 
men who afterward fought zealously against the real Revolution 
of Independence. 

Indeed, it is a law of the historical process, demonstrated 
again and again, that no genuine social revolution can be suc- 
cessfully carried out by a class whose material interests are not 
at stake in that revolution. The so-called revolutions effected 
by the moneyed and military classes so common in Latin-Amer- 
ica are not revolutions at all in the social sense, but simply sur- 
face disturbances for the petty purposes of legalized plunder and 
reprisal. Never have such disturbances the real freedom of the 
masses for their object. The student must be careful not to 
confuse these affairs (termed "comic opera revolutions," and 
rightly, were they not so tragic in their effects on the country at 
large) with the grim, pathetic, eternal revolt of the common 
people against conditions intolerably brutal and degrading. 

The failure of this conspiracy was directly due to the treachery 
of one of the conspirators — a lieutenant of the army, named 
Augustin Iturbide. We mention the fact chiefly because it 
suitably introduces us to a figure destined to play a notorious 
part in Mexican history. 

Many who took part in this "parlour-revolution " later on took 
part in the genuine Revolution of Independence. Particularly 
was this true of the Intellectuals. These men, as we have seen, 
were for the most part members of the ostracized middle class, 
and ardent students of the virile philosophy of the French 
Revolution. The social unrest of the time gave them an ex- 
cellent opportunity to arouse the people to a struggle with the 
oppressive power of Spain. The advantage of independence 



28 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

for the Intellectuals was clearly enough defined. For them it 
meant freedom to express their ideas, and to attain by merit the 
highest positions in the realm. 

The Church, now thoroughly on guard, was the first to sound 
a warning against the coming revolution; and well she might, 
for the tocsin of Independence was about to be heard. But it 
was not now the parlour-revolution of disgruntled Aristocrats 
and Intellectuals with which she had to deal, but the spontane- 
ous revolt of the native working class — the common people, in 
bondage for three hundred years, and now aroused to their 
might as a race and as a class. 

At midnight on the 15th of September, 1810, at the rectory of 
the revolutionary priest, Miguel Hidalgo, in Dolores, State of 
Guanajuato, the call to arms of the real Revolution of Indepen- 
dence was sounded. Two young ex-officers of the army, Juan 
Aldama and Ignacio Allende, devoted to the revolutionary 
cause, had crept by night to Hidalgo's house to warn him that 
their plans for a popular uprising were already known to the 
government, and that all three of them were in immediate dan- 
ger of arrest. The undaunted Hidalgo exclaimed: "Action 
must be taken at once. There is no time to be lost. We shall 
yet see the oppressor broken and the fragments scattered on the 
ground." He thereupon promptly summoned the street watch- 
men who were already in the conspiracy, and bid them arouse 
the workmen in the town. 

Miguel Hidalgo, destined to become the dominant factor in 
the great struggle which once and for all time freed Mexico from 
the oppression of Spain, was a good type of the average Mexican 
Intellectual. Although a priest, the incumbent of the scanty 
curacy of Dolores, he was a man of liberal scholarship. Emi- 
nently practical in his attempts to ameliorate the wretched con- 
ditions of his parishioners, and a close student of economics, he 
established for their benefit a number of cooperative enterprises, 
including porcelain, pottery, and weaving factories, a black- 
smith shop, and a silkworm farm. He was a brave and deter- 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 29 

mined man, simple in his habits, quick-witted and humorous in 
conversation, and beloved of the people for the kindness which 
he invariably showed toward them. At this moment, when he 
first appears as the leader and organizer of the Revolution, he was 
about fifty-eight years of age; in physique, a man of medium 
height, robust proportion, ruddy complexion, and massive, well- 
modelled head. 

The alarm once given, spread rapidly to all parts of the town, 
and peons and workmen, armed with weapons which they had 
themselves fashioned on the anvil, began to fill the streets with- 
out the parish-house. It was already three o'clock in the morn- 
ing and the bells were ringing for the peons' mass. But there 
was no mass that morning. 

"Hidalgo called the people into the church, and speaking 
from the pulpit said : * My children, this day comes to us a new 
dispensation. Are you ready to receive it? Will you be free? 
Will you make the effort to recover from the hated Spaniards 
the lands stolen from your fathers three hundred years ago?'" 
(Bancroft, "History of Mexico," Vol. IV, p. 177.) 

In this brief, momentous harangue stands crystallized the real 
issue of the Revolution of Independence. If the battle-cry of 
the insurgents was henceforth, "Down with the Gachupines" (a 
nickname for the Spaniards), this was not due so much to the fact 
that the big land-owners were Spaniards, as to the fact that they 
maintained their hold on the land only through the powerful 
arm of the Spanish executive. Supplementing this attitude 
toward the administration on the part of the native peons and 
workmen was the eagerness of the mixed-blood middle class to 
overthrow a regime that ostracized them from all the higher 
oflficial positions in Church, State, and Army. But whatever 
advantage these Intellectuals may have hoped to gain, the great 
mass of peons who shed their blood freely in the struggle had at 
heart no other idea than the ownership of the land. The Revolu- 
tion of Independence was essentially an agrarian revolution. 

The harangue finished, Hidalgo stepped from the pulpit and, 



30 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

placing himself at the head of the now armed and aroused in- 
surgents, marched on the jail. The jails were filled with the 
sick and the more spirited peons who refused to bow down 
utterly to their masters. The first step of the Revolution was 
to give freedom to these men wrongly deprived of liberty. 
The guards of the jail were taken by surprise, disarmed, and 
their weapons handed over to the freed prisoners. From the 
jail the insurgents now marched on to the office of the Sub- 
Delegado, or Mayor of the town. This official was by law the 
collector and treasurer of the tithings wrung from the peons by 
the Church. Hidalgo promptly seized the entire treasure on 
behalf of the Revolution. 

With men, arms, and money, the movement was already well 
under way. Since the previous night Hidalgo had dispatched 
messengers north, south, east and west, to arouse the peons of 
the haciendas. Soon they came marching in bands into the 
city. By noon more than six hundred of them were already 
enlisted in the Revolution. Scantily supplied with arms and 
untrained to war as they were, Hidalgo was reluctant to let 
them join the ranks. But they refused to withdraw. Their will 
was to stay, and at least to shed their blood for the cause of 
liberty, and Hidalgo acquiesced, in the hope that presently 
he might be able to find arms for them. For the first time in 
three hundred years the peons had imposed their will on the 
social process. 

At last they were sovereign — so ran the minds of the native 
peons — they would work no longer for the enrichment of idle 
Spanish folk, but they themselves who tilled the land, planted 
the seed, and irrigated the crop, should garner the harvest and 
retain possession of it. No longer would they yield to soldier, 
and clergy, and aristocrat the fruits of their labour. Some of 
them would fight, while others at home would till the land to 
feed their brothers in action. Their masters would no longer 
be able to browbeat them; instead, they would have to flee and 
hide. The land henceforth would be the peons'. There should 



THE REVOLUTION OP INDEPENDENCE 31 

be no more peonage, no more taxes, no more ti things. To 
every peon should be given all the land he could cultivate, and 
the fruits of it for himself and his family. 

This was the real issue of the Revolution. The bourgeois 
leaders endeavoured to confine the scope of it merely to terri- 
torial independence. But the great mass of peons who were 
doing the actual fighting were in the field not for mere political 
change but for the ownership of the land. Their ideas in the 
matter were not by any means communistic, as some have 
thought. On the contrary, they were strictly individualistic. 
The desire of the peon was that every man should own his own 
piece of land and the crop thereof. 

At the first outbreak of the Revolution the Church promptly 
unsheathed her most terrible psychological weapon — the ex- 
communication under the dread formula, "Si quis suadente 
diabolo." Under the careful tutelage of the priests the peasants 
had become incredibly superstitious, and no better idea can be 
given of the desperation and heroic abandon of this revolt than 
the fact that the excommunicatory thunders of the Church 
rolled over its head unheeded or derided. For these men the 
land was the thing. Religion was for the nonce submerged. 
Later in the campaign, when the hypnotism of centuries re- 
asserted its power over them, they compelled the revolutionary 
priests in their ranks — and there were many of them — to per- 
form mass in the camps and on the battlefields. 

Contemporaneously with the Revolution of Independence in 
Mexico similar revolutions, aimed at the overthrow of the 
Spanish colonial regime, broke out in all La tin- America. Thus 
we see that the sturdy agrarian revolt which broke out in Eng- 
land in the fourteenth century had not expended its force at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century. We have seen it leap 
from England to Germany, from Germany to the United States, 
from the United States to France, from France to Spain, from 
Spain to Mexico, and from Mexico to all Latin-America. For a 



32 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

hundred years, not only in Mexico but in all Latin-America, 
this agrarian revolution has not slumbered an hour. Now 
smouldering and apparently dead, anon bursting forth in fitful 
gleams of flame, and, finally, during the last three years, culmi- 
nating in the mighty Mexican conflagration, the struggle has 
been maintained for the land which is life and liberty and home. 
It must still be maintained. Eventually it must triumph. It 
is the struggle of the fourteenth century in England — the serf 
versus the feudal lord. The only difference in the two situa- 
tions is that the feudal lord of to-day ■ — the big corporation — 
is immeasurably more powerful and far more deeply entrenched 
than his ruffianly, picturesque prototype of an earlier age; while 
the peon is not only comparatively, but intrinsically more 
wretched, degraded, and incapable of resistance than the 
sturdy, bold, and comparatively well-fed serf of feudal Europe. 

Within a few days of the fateful morning when Hidalgo from 
his pulpit aroused his people to the dawn of a new dispensation, 
the ranks of the Revolution had swelled to several thousand 
men. The government, at first skeptical of the importance of 
the affair, finally awoke to the necessity for action, and issued 
peremptory orders to the army to quell the " mob of bandits and 
marauders." At the same time the Virrey made a futile at- 
tempt to render the uprising abortive by issuing a proclamation 
in which he promised the peons relief from oppression and free- 
dom from taxation. He was too late. The revolutionists had 
already tasted of success. Marching triumphantly through 
the State of Guanajuato, city after city, ungarrisoned and un- 
prepared, fell into their power. Everywhere along their march 
they seized and imprisoned the Spanish landlords, holding them 
for hostage, or compelling them to flee into exile. Their lands 
were given over to the native peons who were working on them, 
and these latter found themselves suddenly possessors of the 
lands they tilled and the crops they harvested. 

In five days the insurgent hosts had increased to thirty thou- 
sand men. Of these only about a thousand were in possession 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 33 

of muskets. The rest were armed chiefly with spears or weap- 
ons of their own manufacture. In their march across the 
state, the army passed through San Miguel el Grande, where 
they considerably increased their numbers; thence they pro- 
ceeded to Celaya; and finally they laid siege to Guanajuato, 
the capital of the state, and the richest mining city of Mexico. 
The city's garrison consisted of only six hundred men, but the 
local government, assisted by the rich Spanish mine-owners and 
high clergy, succeeded in organizing a strong force of volun- 
teers with which to oppose the revolutionists. The fiercest of 
the fighting raged about the city fortress called Alhondiga de 
Granaditas. Here the defenders massed their principal forces 
and awaited events. The attack was opened by the insurgents, 
and so fierce was their onslaught that within a few hours the 
garrison, overpowered, and demoralized by the death of their 
commander-in-chief, surrendered. During the assault a priest 
within the fortress, seeing that the physical weapon was proving 
insuflicient, decided to try the power of the psychological 
weapon, and marching forth from the fortress bearing aloft a large 
crucifix he commanded the insurgents to withdraw. Having 
neither steel nor ammunition to waste, the peons simply stoned 
him and smashed his crucifix without remorse. So fierce was 
the conflict that over two thousand of the unarmed insurgents 
lost their lives. The fortune of the day was decided by the 
heroism of an old insurgent peon known as Pipila. When the 
insurgents, even with a reckless sacrifice of life, found themselves 
unable to break into the fortress, this man placed a large, flat 
stone on his back and, taking fire and turpentine in his hand, 
crawled through a rain of bullets to the massive door of the 
fortress and, setting fire to it, tended the flames until an open- 
ing had been made for the assailants. More than four million 
dollars, mostly tithings and taxes extorted from the people by 
j the Church, was discovered in the treasuries of Alhondiga de 
Granaditas. This money was confiscated by the insurgents for 
the expenses of the Revolution. After the victory the insur- 



34 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

gents sent emissaries to arouse the people to revolt in San Luis 
Potosi. Here, however, the vigorous opposition of well-disci- 
plined troops frustrated the uprising. 

The moment was opportune for the insurgents. Spain was 
at v/ar with France, and the Virrey, fearing that the French 
Government might eventually dispatch an invading army to 
the shores of Mexico, was compelled to conserve the greater 
part of his military strength for the protection of Vera Cruz and 
the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the insurgents were able to make 
tremendous headway in the central and southwestern states, 
practically unchecked. And since the ill-gotten plunder of the 
Church was confiscated wherever the opportunity presented 
itself, the financial resources of the Revolution were soon con- 
siderable. 

In possession of arms and money, Hidalgo now decided to 
march his revolutionary hosts on Valladolid (to-day Morelia), 
one of the wealthiest strongholds of the Church in Mexico, and 
for that reason a desirable source of supplies. When the news 
of the approaching insurgent army reached the city, the clergy 
themselves flew to arms and desperately endeavoured to put the 
town in a state of defence. The Bishop placed himself at the 
head of the garrison, and ordered the bells of the cathedral to be 
melted into cannon balls, while the friars stripped themselves 
of their monastical garments and donned the gay uniforms of 
the military. These ecclesiastics were generally exceptionally 
strong men. Feasting daily on the choicest of viands, living 
almost continuously in the open air, riding and hunting, un- 
touched by the penalties of labour, they were physically quite 
fit for the fray. When the insurgents appeared before the town, 
however, the masses of the people within the gates arose in their 
favour, and the gallant ecclesiastics fled for their lives without 
firing a single shot. More than half a million dollars of tithings 
was confiscated from the Church treasuries and restored to the 
use of the people in their struggle for freedom, and the Canoni- 
cal Chapter was compelled to repeal the sentence of excommuni- 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 35 

cation which had been laid upon the insurgents. The Virrey, 
at last recognizing that the insurrection was liable to prove a 
more dangerous enemy to his power than the French invasion, 
dispatched an army of six thousand men under the command of 
El Conde de la Cadena into the disaffected districts. However, 
when the royal troops arrived at San Miguel El Grande they 
found little food for their steel, as the revolutionists had already 
vacated the town to take possession of Valladolid. Instead of 
being welcomed with wild cheers, as they had expected, they 
found themselves received in silence and cold disapproval by the 
townsfolk, who only a few weeks before had opened their arms 
to the insurgents. 

From San Miguel the discomfited El Conde de la Cadena 
marched to Dolores, and there joined forces with General Cal- 
leja. Having no insurgents to fight, they amused themselves 
with destroying Hidalgo's house. Meanwhile the insurgents 
had left Valladolid to begin their fateful march on Mexico City. 
Hidalgo strongly opposed this step, for he was well aware of the 
disorganized and unarmed condition of his forces, and foresaw 
clearly the result should they be obliged to engage the well- 
disciplined and heavily armed troops of the metropolis. The 
peons themselves, however, were anxious for the venture, and 
the chieftains associated with Hidalgo were as eager as their 
followers, the more that daily messages were being received from 
the capital promising a general uprising of the people within her 
gates in support of the revolutionary assault. All these cir- 
cumstances combined to overcome Hidalgo's opposition to the 
step, and the insurgent host set forth. 

The two royal generals. El Conde de la Cadena and Calleja, 
armed with the Virrey's authority summarily to execute not 
only actual insurgents but any one suspected of insurgent sym- 
pathies, were encamped at Dolores with seven thousand well- 
trained men and four pieces of artillery. At the same time 
General Trujillo was ordered by the Virrey to take another 
seven thousand picked men from the garrison of Mexico City to 



36 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

break up Hidalgo's march. At a place called Monte de las 
Cruces the two armies engaged. The insurgents, under Hidalgo, 
numbered eighty thousand, but not more than two thousand of 
these were well-armed; the larger number of them were boys and 
old men, whom love of liberty and a dream of heroism and 
martyrdom for freedom had drawn into the ranks. Hidalgo in 
vain endeavoured to hold them in reserve. They complained 
so bitterly against this restraint and pleaded so hard to be al- 
lowed to go to the front, that Hidalgo was compelled to let them 
have their way. On the 30th of October, at dawn, in the midst 
of the forest of Monte de las Cruces, on an altar of rocks, and in 
full sight of the royalist forces, Hidalgo celebrated mass. 
Scarcely was it jBnished before the battle began. All day and 
late into the night the carnage raged. When morning dawned 
the royalists were completely routed. But the victory had been 
bought at a terrible price — more than ten thousand half -naked, 
unarmed insurgents lay dead on the field, mowed down by the 
heavy musket and artillery fire of the well-equipped royal 
forces. 

The psychological moment of the Revolution had arrived. 
If the people of the city and neighbourhood proved true to their 
promises and pledges, and rose to aid the advancing insurgent 
army, all resistance would be vain before their overwhelming 
hosts, and the military, beset on all sides, could do nothing but 
surrender. Emissaries were dispatched to the capital and sur- 
rounding country calling upon the people to rise. There was 
no response. Again and again messengers were sent by Hidalgo 
into the city to arouse concerted action on the part of the met- 
ropolitan insurgents with the invading army. Still there was 
no response. Whether cowed or cajoled it matters not. The 
men who had summoned Hidalgo to march on Mexico City now 
refused him the aid they had promised. The terrible slaughter 
of the insurgents showed him clearly the prematurity of his 
action in marching on the metropolis, and he fell back, effecting 
a detour to the north. A few days later he encountered Calleja 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 37 

and sustained a severe defeat at his hands. Now victorious, 
anon defeated, the insurgent hosts finally succeeded in reach- 
ing and taking possession of Guadalajara. Already, as we have 
seen, the southwestern portion of the country was in the hands 
of the revolutionists, while Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi had 
become centres of revolutionary activity. 

At the beginning of the revolt, Hidalgo, using the power with 
which he was invested as leader of the insurgent forces, had 
uttered a decree abolishing slavery, peonage, and the taxation 
of the poor. Now, in Guadalajara, he issued a further decree 
restoring the land to the peons. At the same time he initiated 
the first form of an organized government by the appointment 
of a minister of state and members of the Audiencia, and by the 
nomination of Pascasio Letona as envoy plenipotentiary to the 
United States with instructions to make, if possible, a treaty of 
alliance and commerce with the republic. Meanwhile the first 
public organ of the insurrection appeared in Guadalajara under 
the caption El Despertador Americano.* At the same time 
Hidalgo and his chieftains went forward vigorously with the 
important work of disciplining the troops and thoroughly train- 
ing them in the use of arms, although of the latter there was still 
a very inadequate supply. 

It is not our intention to follow step by step the course of 
Mexico's struggle to wrest independence from Spain. That has 
been done adequately elsewhere. Our object is to reveal the 
economic cause that lay at the base of this Revolution. We 
propose to show here and throughout this volume the eternal 
strife between the two main classes of society — the possessing 
class and the non-possessing class — and the tactics used by 



*Perhaps it is well to mention here that the word Mexico, as the name for the 
country lying between the United States on the north and Guatemala on the 
south, was first used ojQ&cially in the Treaty of Cordova (1820) by which Spain 
agreed to recognize Mexico's independence. Under the Spanish regime this 
country, which then extended much farther north and south than it does to-day 
was officially termed "Nueva Espana," or "New Spain." During the struggle 
for independence the name of America was adopted, and this is the name used 
in all the writings of the period. 



38 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

them in the fight. At the base of this struggle, as at the base of 
all the succeeding struggles, lay the effort of the peons to obtain 
the land. For the rest — the middle class, Army, Aristocracy, 
and Clergy — united or divided on the various issues, according 
to the dictates of their material interests. For instance, in 
this particular struggle, native Intellectuals could be found in 
numbers on the royalist side, and Spanish Intellectuals on the 
insurgent side, showing that the question of territorial independ- 
ence was the formal rather than the real issue at stake. As a 
general rule we shall find the Church and Army and Aristocracy 
presenting a solid and united phalanx, for their interests are 
generally identical; while the middle class is divided, as indeed 
are its economic interests. 

Eventually, Hidalgo and his forces were driven forth from 
Guadalajara and were compelled to retreat into the north. Al- 
ready, however, as an offset to this reverse, the Revolution had 
begun to gain ground in other parts of the country. But on the 
march from Coahuila to Chihuahua the insurgents suffered a 
defeat in an encounter with royalist troops, and Hidalgo, be- 
trayed by one of his own oflScers, was captured, subjected to a 
war tribunal, and sentenced to be shot. 

His speech before the tribunal remains, like the famous utter- 
ances of Abraham Lincoln, an inspiration to the political con- 
science of the people for all time. He said: "Our aim and 
purpose in arousing and furthering this Revolution was to effect 
a popular election of Congress in which would be represented 
every individual in this country, whether he live in town, or 
city, or village, or farm. It was our intention that this Congress 
should promulgate laws for the welfare and happiness of the 
people, and for the purity of religion in a spirit of humanity; for 
the people must be governed with the sweetness of fatherly 
commands. By these laws it was our intention to establish 
the brotherhood of man, the destruction of poverty and ignor- 
ance, the prevention of the ruin of the nation, the progress of 
the fine arts, industry, and commerce, recognizing in every one 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 39 

without exception the right to enjoy the bounteous production 
of our rich lands, and the right to be happy, thus obeying God's 
fatherly commands to this country." 

In these simple words was enshrined a noble doctrine, but a 
doctrine that chimed ill with the economic interests of the priv- 
ileged classes in Mexico. Hidalgo was not merely voicing his 
personal aspirations for the welfare of the people; he was voicing 
the aspirations of the entire Revolution. Herein lay the hein- 
ousness of the crime that destroyed his life. 

Before daybreak, on the morning of the 31st of July, 1811, 
Hidalgo was led forth to the place of execution. Recollecting 
that he had left some sweetmeats under his pillow, he stopped 
and requested that they might be brought to him. These he 
distributed among the firing platoon. Being bound upon the 
seat of execution, he raised his hand to his breast without a 
tremor and reminded the soldiers that this was the mark at 
which they must aim. The signal was given, the platoon fired, 
and Hidalgo, one of the world's greatest heroes in the cause of 
liberty, lay dead. 

The same fate was meted out to his three gallant lieutenants, 
Ignacio AUende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano Jimenez. By the 
order of General Felix Maria Calleja, their bodies were beheaded 
and sent to Guanajuato, where they were nailed to the four 
corners of the Alhondiga de Granaditas, beneath the following 
inscription : 

The heads of Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano 
Jimenez, great bandits and chief leaders of the Revolution, who ransacked and 
robbed the treasuries of God and the treasuries of the King, who shed with great 
atrocity the innocent blood of faithful priests and good judges of the King our 
Lord, and filled with ruin, disgrace, and calamity, these faithful and royal parts 
of the kingdom of Spain, Here are nailed their heads by the orders of the Sefior 
General Don Felix Maria Calleja Del Rey, illustrious vanquisher of Aculco^ 
Guanajuato, and Calderon, and restorer of the peace in this America. Guana- 
juato, in the year of our Lord, 1811. 

This summary execution of the capable and devoted leaders 
of the Revolution was a check to the insurgents, but it left the 



40 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

survivors undismayed. The Revolution had spread over the 
whole country, and those already in arms were only the more 
determined to carry on the struggle. Already vast stretches of 
land were in possession of the peons. For the first time in their 
lives they tasted of personal freedom; for the first time they 
could hold their heads high, free men, and lords of the soil. Not 
willingly would they surrender these precious conquests; rather 
would they die to a man. 

Already the foul mists of superstition were beginning to lift 
from their minds in the exercise of free activities. They had 
seen the Church — ogre and master of their souls — made 
humble and impotent before their own might, its excommuni- 
cations derided, its dread priests stoned, and its trea.suries, sup- 
posed to be guarded by the avenging hand of the Most High, 
sacked with impunity. In the violation of the very code in 
which they had been crushed and enslaved, body and soul, they 
found — not the fearful punishments that they had been taught 
from infancy to expect — but, on the contrary, freedom, well- 
being, possession of the lands and of themselves. To the 
courage of desperation had succeeded the valour of hope and 
manhood — things not easily crushed whatever be the opposing 
forces. 

As we have said, the entire southwest was practically under 
the control of the Revolution. In the west, J. Maria Morelos 
successfully held three or four provinces; in the south. Bravo 
and Rayon maintained large commands of insurgents; in the 
east, Matamoros was gaining ground; while in the north, Ber- 
nardo Gutierrez de Lara was driving the Spanish Government 
out of Texas. 

This last revolutionary leader relinquished the fight for a time 
in order to seek moral and financial support for the cause at 
Washington. The insurgents were sadly in need of arms and 
ammunition; and the aid and countenance of the sister republic 
in this matter would have been invaluable. In the negotiations 
which ensued, James Madison, then President of the United 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 41 

States, offered moral and financial aid to the Revolution on 
condition of receiving for such services substantial grants of 
Mexican territory. Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara indignantly 
repulsed these overtures and returned to his command. 

In these early years of the nineteenth century revolution was 
rife in all parts of the Spanish Empire. In Spain itself the 
Liberal party, profiting by the national discontent and the sub- 
servience of King Fernando VII to Napoleon, had been able to 
enforce their demands for the summoning of a general Congress 
representing Spain and the Spanish possessions, for the purpose 
of framing a new constitution which should effectually express 
the will of the people. This Congress, known in history as Las 
Cortes de Cadiz, met in the city of Cadiz, where the new consti- 
tution was duly proclaimed on the 18th of March, 1812. This 
was the first constitution to fully recognize the equal rights of all 
Spanish subjects, whether natives of Spain or of the colonies. 
It likewise definitely wrested the sovereign right from the royal 
family and vested it in the people as a whole. 

Principles radical as were these at that time, necessarily 
aroused tremendous opposition on the part of the Church and 
Aristocracy, not only in Spain, but in all the Spanish colonies, 
including Mexico. This opposition developed to a bitter hatred 
of the new order, when, in the following year, the Liberal party 
decreed the abohtion of the Holy Inquisition. From that mo- 
ment there sprang up in the minds of the privileged class in 
Mexico a spirit of rebellion against the Liberal home government 
which developed during the next eight years into open secession. 
For the nonce, however, the privileged classes of Mexico sorely 
needed the aid of the Spanish troops to suppress the growing 
agrarian revolt within their borders, and must needs dissimulate 
the real nature of their sentiments. 

As a temporary measure they compelled the Virrey to proclaim 
that the new constitution was not suited to the conditions ob- 
taining in Mexico, and consequently need not be obeyed. They 



42 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

realized, however, that the crisis was becoming acute. If, on 
the one hand, they refused to submit to the Liberal constitution, 
and, on the other hand, feared an open rupture with the home 
government, they saw that it was highly necessary for them to 
adopt some third course which, while safeguarding their own 
interests, would nevertheless have the appearance of conforming, 
if not to the spirit, then to the letter of the new order. 

With this object in mind the privileged classes decided to call 
the election of a colonial Congress which would clothe their old 
dominance in a new garb. Meanwhile, in view of the fact that 
the Revolution was increasing in extent and power every day, 
they compelled the Virrey to issue a dummy proclamation, 
couched in terms of perfervid generosity, conceding to the people 
not only all that the most radical revolutionary had ever asked, 
but more than the most Utopian revolutionary had ever dreamed. 
This interesting document proclaimed that all the government 
land was to be divided among the peons, and that the peons were 
to receive likewise all the capital they needed for the develop- 
ment of these lands from the treasuries of the municipalities to 
which they belonged. The latter promise was the more amus- 
ing in that the treasuries of the municipalities at this time were 
invariably empty. The contempt of the privileged classes, 
however, for the peon intelligence was such that they felt quite 
sure this proclamation would put an immediate end to the Revo- 
lution. It had, of course, even less effect on the insurgents than 
had the excommunicatory thunders of the Church. 

Throughout the whole period the press was merely another 
supplementary tool of the privileged classes. Under the consti- 
tution of Cadiz, it is true, the complete freedom of the press had 
been established by law, but when a few newspapers endeavoured 
to avail themselves of the privilege, the Virrey announced that 
such liberty was incompatible with the welfare of the country, 
and they were promptly suppressed. 

We have seen that at the earliest opportunity which presented 
itself in the course of the Revolution, Hidalgo had endeavoured 



JOSE MARIA MORELOS 

Insurgent leader and the leading spirit in the framing of the constitution of 

Apatzmgam. Morelos preferred the title "Serf^UheNatron'' 

to that of "Generalissimo" 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 43 

to organize a revolutionary government. From Guadalajara, 
the temporary seat of his administration, he had sent Ignacio 
Lopez Rayon to the south to confer with the patriot leader 
Morelos on the advisability of establishing a republican form of 
government. Morelos had accepted Hidalgo's suggestions, and, 
pursuant to his wishes, had organized a committee which opened 
its session on the 19th of August, 1811, at Zitacuaro, in the state 
of Michoacan. 

This Junta de Zitacuaro, as it was called, consisted of five 
members, among w^hom were Jose Liceaga, Jose Sixto Verdugo, 
and Ignacio Lopez Rayon, this last occupying the presidential 
chair. The junta formally appointed Morelos commander-in- 
chief of the Array of the Rebellion, with the title of "General- 
issimo." Morelos, like most of the other great figures of the 
Revolution, a plain man of the people, expressed disgust with 
this title, which savoured so strongly of the gayly uniformed 
officers of the royalist army. He preferred, he said, to be called 
"The Serf of the Nation." 

The establishment of this junta deeply alarmed the govern- 
ment, and their efforts to subdue the Revolution were re- 
doubled. War raged fiercely in every part of the country, and 
the Church and government, panic-stricken before the now 
imminent danger of being overwhelmed by sheer force of num- 
bers, began sending frantic appeals to Spain for troops. In the 
meantime, the junta called upon the people to elect representa- 
tives to a congress for the purpose of framing a constitution 
and organizing the country under its provisions. 

On the 13th of September, 1813, in the city of Chilpancingo, 
to-day the capital of Guerrero, this justly celebrated Congress 
convened. Its first act was to declare the independence of 
Mexico from Spain. In the following year it framed the first 
Mexican Constitution. This remarkable document, generally 
known as the Constitution of Apatzingam, from the town where 
it was first proclaimed, was a triumph of Liberal statesmanship. 
It recognized the rights of citizenship of every male inhabi- 



44 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

tant of Mexico over eighteen years of age. It established in- 
direct elections, the free ballot, and the liberty of the press. 
Although recognizing the Roman Catholic religion as the na- 
tional religion, it provided, to some extent, for freedom of re- 
ligious opinion; and while establishing tithings for the support 
of the clergy, abolished the land monopoly of the Church; and, 
furthermore, brought the Church under the civil tribunal by 
the abolition of the hated clerical and military fueros. In ad- 
ministrative matters the constitution adhered to the principle 
of the division of power, creating an executive, judiciary, and 
legislature. The appointment of the executive, called the 
"Supreme Government," was placed in the hands of Congress. 
This executive was uniquely constituted in that it consisted of 
three men who, during the period for which they were elected, 
succeeded each other in rotation, each holding the supreme 
power for four months. The Supreme Court of Justice was 
constituted to consist of five judges to be elected by Congress. 

It may occasion the reader some surprise that this Congress, 
which represented the will of an avowedly agrarian revolution, 
should treat the land question so inadequately. It must be 
remembered, however, that this Congress gave expression to 
the immediate necessities of a social transition rather than to 
the reconstructive projects of an accomplished social revolu- 
tion. The men who framed the constitution recognized that the 
immediate necessity of the hour was the establishment of a full 
republican form of government, by means of which — the Revo- 
lution once accomplished — the people might establish their will. 

Many other admirable features were woven into the fabric 
of this constitution — among them laws aimed at the suppres- 
sion of luxuries, abolition of poverty, and the adjustment of 
remuneration for labour to a higher standard of living. Per- 
sonal taxation was abolished and provision made for placing 
the burden of government support on capital alone. The demo- 
cratic control of legislation was further secured by a special 
declaration which vested in the people the right to initiate laws for 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 45 

the consideration of Congress. The whole document, indeed, 
constitutes a truly remarkable record of the political genius of 
the native Mexican common people as distinguished from the 
alien, perverted, and decadent ruHng class. The United States 
has had a hundred years of democratic legislation since the 
Mexican Constitution of Independence was framed, and has 
only recently adopted the initiative in a few of her states, while 
her legislation, in respect of taxation and labour, appears hope- 
lessly inadequate beside the provisions which mark this first 
effort of Mexican democracy. 

"In comparing the final form of the constitution with the 
original draft of it, prepared by Ignacio Lopez Rayon, the in- 
fluence exerted on the deliberations of Congress by the new 
Spanish Constitution, established at the Cortes de Cadiz, is 
clearly seen. For the rest, the modern socialist will have no dif- 
ficulty in recognizing his own concepts of social reconstruction in 
many of the principles, beloved of Morelos, which this document 
embodied in regard to taxation and the remuneration of labour. ""^"^ 
(Zamacois, "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 9., pp. 303-304.) 

If we consider for a moment the trying circumstances under 
which this constitution was framed we shall be amazed at the 
splendid accomplishment of these men of the revolutionary 
Congress. Often hiding in the mountains, fleeing constantly 
from retreat to retreat, always in imminent danger of their 
lives, their property confiscated, their wives and families at the 
mercy of the royal government, under sentence of death as 
traitors to the King, and under the awful excommunications 
of Rome for violating her altars, these men, upborne by the 
passion for liberty, carried their great task to a superb con- 
clusion. Such was the spirit of the Revolution of Independence, 
and such is the spirit of the agrarian revolt which has shaken 
Mexico to her foundations in recent times. 

The establishment of the constitution and the organization 

*Throughout this work the italics in quotations are our own except where 
otherwise stated. — Authors. 



46 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

of government gave a mighty impetus to the revolutionary 
movement. Congress again endeavoured to establish inter- 
national relationships and dispatched an envoy, Jose Pablo 
Anaya, to Washington to obtain recognition for the new nation. 
Little result attended this embassy, however; Anaya, happening 
to encounter Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, received from 
him many friendly promises and an offer of financial assistance 
in the purchase of ammunition for the insurgents. But 
neither the formal recognition of the Revolution nor the prom- 
ised financial aid ever materialized. 

By this time the Revolution had reached the zenith of its 
power; and, but for help from without, the dominance of the 
trinity of privilege — Church, Army, and Aristocracy — would 
have been destroyed from Mexico for all time. Unfortunately, 
however, at this critical moment, a counter-revolution broke 
out in Spain, which abolished the constitution of 1812, and made 
the King absolute ruler once more. He immediately responded 
to the frantic appeals for help received from the panic-stricken 
royalists in Mexico and dispatched an army to their assistance. 
Equipped with the best artillery, and numbering — if the 
troops already in action are counted — over a hundred thou- 
sand men, this army of Spain descended like an avalanche on the 
revolutionary forces . From that moment the cause of liberty be- 
gan to lose ground. Before the opposing host the revolutionists 
suffered reverse upon reverse, culminating on the 22nd of No- 
vember, 1815, in the capture and execution of the great Morelos. 
The loss of Morelos was an almost overwhelming blow to his 
followers. His powerful genius as a fighter and organizer had 
succeeded in maintaining more than sixty thousand soldiers in 
the field, and nothing short of the heavy reinforcements re- 
ceived by the royalists from Spain could have prevented his 
entry into Mexico City. 

• The Revolution was apparently crushed. This was only 
true, however, of that phase of it which found expression in arms. 
Other subtler but no less powerful forces were at work destroy- 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 47 

ing the old order and upbuilding the new. Prominent among 
these was the illicit free trade between the coast ports of Mexico 
and the countries of Europe, which had sprung up unchecked in 
the general social confusion. In a previous chapter we have re- 
ferred to the tutelage in which Nueva Espaiia was held by Spain, 
and nowhere was this tutelage more stringently enforced than 
in the matter of trade. With Spain alone were the colonial 
merchants allowed to exchange their produce, and all commercial 
communication with the rest of the world was sternly re- 
pressed. Under the stress of the Revolution, however, the vigi- 
lance of the government weakened, and Mexican merchants 
were quick to seize the opportunity of trading with vessels from 
other European countries. In fact a kind of free trade was es- 
tablished. The great profit accruing from this new commercial 
freedom brought vividly to the consciousness of even the wealthy 
classes the decided advantage of Independence. It is true, their 
lands had been wrested from them by the peons, but this new 
trade bid fair to compensate them for the loss. Moreover, they 
cherished the belief that even a government based on Indepen- 
dence would restore their land to them, more particularly if they 
themselves should prove active in supporting its establishment. 
In view of these facts, therefore, it is not surprising that a num- 
ber of the more enterprising land-owners and merchants began 
to transfer their support from the royalists to the revolutionary 
cause. 

This breaking up of the monopoly of the Mexican trade held 
by Spain was a very genuine conquest of the Revolution. If in 
the year 1816 the cause of progress seemed to have lost ground 
on the battlefield, it had yet made an invaluable advance in this 
matter of opening the avenues of the country to the commercial 
currents and civilizing influences of the great outside world. It 
was not only foreign bales of goods that entered Mexican ports, 
under the new freedom, but new ideas, the great conquests of 
the human mind in science, and philosophy, and government, 
from which the Mexican people had been too long cut off. The 



48 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

importance of this intellectual contact to the cause of democracy 
cannot be overestimated. Thus the positive loss to the Revolu- 
tion was more apparent than real. Even in the matter of the 
land — large areas of it had been confiscated already by the 
people — they might not be able to retain all that they had won, 
but they would undoubtedly be able to retain a portion of it. 
The hands of the clock could never go back to the old position. 

There was another cause, however, less direct but more pro- 
found than the last, which, while mainly responsible for the final 
success of the Revolution, in so far as territorial independence 
was concerned, was equally responsible for its perversion from 
the program of economic reconstruction which had formed its 
base. This cause lay in the reconquest of power by the Liberal 
party in Spain. As we have said, a counter-revolution had 
broken out in Spain which had abolished the constitution of 1812, 
and made the King absolute ruler once more. The change had 
occasioned a series of sporadic uprisings throughout the whole 
country, which, however, were easily suppressed. Finding him- 
self master at home, the King had proceeded to deal with the 
colonial situation. Already, as we have seen, a hundred thou- 
sand Spanish troops had been poured into Mexico to aid the 
royalist party against the insurgents. The King had then dis- 
patched further reinforcements, and succeeded in so far master- 
ing the situation that, of the mighty hosts which had swept the 
country under Hidalgo and Morelos, only a few thousand insur- 
gents under the command of Vicente Guerrero remained to 
maintain the insurrection in the mountains of the south. At 
the same time the King had dispatched well-armed and numeri- 
cally powerful contingents to several of the other Spanish- 
American colonies where revolutions had broken out. In this 
way, with a singular lack of foresight, he had practically denuded 
the home country of the military forces on whose support alone 
any absolutism can stand. 

The Liberal party in Spain, which, since the overthrow of the 
constitution, had never ceased to plot in the secrecy of the Ma- 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 49 

sonic Lodges the downfall of absolutism, had been quick to 
perceive and take full advantage of the royal negligence. Sud- 
denly revolution burst forth in all parts of the country. A 
portion of the army which remained in Spain had joined the 
movement, and the King, impotent without his troops, was 
compelled to restore the constitution of 1812, to abolish the Holy 
Inquisition, and to submit himself to the tutelage of a govern- 
ment junta organized by the revolutionists. 

Thus, in a trice, the whole front of affairs changed, and the 
privileged classes who comprised the royalist party in Mexico 
found themselves once more, after a brief respite, under the 
dominance of a constitution as opposed to their psychology and 
inimical to their material interests as was the revolutionary con- 
stitution of Apatzingam. No longer could they look to Spain 
for troops and supplies to subdue the insurgents. For them now, 
rather than for the insurgents, independence from Spain had 
become an urgent necessity. Whatever hope they may have 
cherished that the Spanish Congress might prove reactionary, 
was dashed to the ground before the event. The Spanish junta, 
in due time, called for the election of representatives to Congress 
from all the districts of Spain and the Spanish possessions. 
When this Congress convened it proved to be overwhelmingly 
Liberal in sentiment. It not only upheld the radical provision 
of the constitution of 1812 but proceeded to enact laws for the 
suppression of a number of religious orders, including the Jesuits,* 
confiscating their wealth to the use of the government, and 
abolishing the hated ecclesiastical fueros, under which the clergy 
had been immune from the civil law. It is easy to imagine the 
state of alarm aroused within the Church by the promulgation 
of these measures. By them her power was practically de- 



*In the year 1905, due to an understanding between President Diaz of Mexicc^ 
President Roosevelt of the United States, and the Catholic Church of California, 
the Tribunal of The Hague sentenced Mexico to support the Catholic Church of 
California by a payment of $1,420,682.67 cash, and a subsequent yearly subsidy 
of $43,050.00 — this in spite of the fact that in 1820 the Spanish Congress had 
suppressed the order of the Jesuits and had confiscated their estates. 



50 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

stroyed, and it is not surprising that Church and King at once 
made common cause in an effort to start a counter-revolution 
against the Liberal party. In Mexico the Church, while se- 
cretly perfecting schemes for maintaining her power, was able 
to prevent the immediate effects of the new legislation by means 
of her censorship over the avenues of publicity. Such a state of 
affairs could not in the nature of things continue long. The 
representatives of Mexico, or, more correctly, Nueva Espana, 
to the Spanish Congress, headed by Ramos Arizpe, had suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the dismissal of the Virrey Apodaca, and his 
successor, the Virrey Novella Azaball — both Mexicans and 
ready tools of the Church — and had secured in their place the 
appointment of one of the foremost leaders of the Spanish Lib- 
eral party, the able Juan de O'Donoju. The new Virrey was 
of Irish descent, a brilliant Intellectual who had endured the 
tortures of the Holy Inquisition for his religious and political 
convictions. Previous to his appointment as Virrey of Nueva 
Espana he had held the position of Jefe Politico of the city of 
Sevilla, in the province of Andalucia, where, on assuming office, 
he had earned the fear and hatred of the Church by expelling 
ail the ecclesiastics from the city as undesirable citizens. His 
appointment as Virrey of Nueva Espana, under the recom- 
mendation of the revolutionary representatives, meant the 
endorsement of the principles of the insurgency in Mexico, the 
downfall of the privileged classes, and the triumph of the people. 
Such a crisis demanded quick action. As soon as the facts 
became generally known, the Church and Aristocracy, acting as 
one man, embraced the cause of Independence. For them, of 
course, independence bore no relation to the economic reorgani- 
zation demanded by the regular insurgents. For them it meant 
territorial independence merely, an independence which implied 
for them the right to continue to suck the life-blood of the coun- 
try in the way that seemed to them most convenient and effec- 
tual. 

This sudden change of front naturally aroused the suspicions 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 51 

of the insurgents; but in a country where free speech and free- 
dom of the press were unknown, at a time when few among the 
lower classes could even read, it was impossible for them to peep 
behind the scenes. Consequently, tired of fighting, hoping at 
least some relief from the now assured Independence, but still 
suspicious, they, for the most part, allowed themselves to be 
drawn into the meshes of the Church and used once more as 
blind creators of their own enslavement. The insurgents in the 
field, it is true, at first held sternly aloof from the movement, 
but, as we shall see, even they were finally seduced into the re- 
quired acquiescence. 

The Revolution for Independence and Privilege, as opposed 
to the people's Revolution for Independence and the Land, 
gained headway with great rapidity. It was so clearly to the 
interests of the privileged classes of Mexico to free themselves 
as speedily as possible from the dominance of the new Liberal 
power in Spain that even the highest magnates of the Church, 
the Army, and Government threw their weight into the move- 
ment without hesitation. At a series of meetings held in Mex- 
ico City under the chairmanship of Father Tirado, president 
of the Holy Inquisition, the high prelates of the Church, chief 
officers of the Army, leading government officials, principal 
merchants and aristocrats — gathered in joint session — rapidly 
formulated plans for the establishment of Independence. The 
Army, of course, was the principal object of their attention. 
With the aid of the 100,000 royal troop already in the country, 
the success of their plans was assured. The chief officers were 
leaders in the plot, and the conspirators were confident that 
with the exercise of some diplomacy and bribery they could 
bring the entire rank and file to their side. Once fully assured 
of military support, their utmost desires would be fulfilled. 
With such a force at their disposal, these aristocratic revolu- 
tionists could defy Spain, crush any local revolt, and establish a 
government that would effectually safeguard their system of 
feudal exploitation of the toiling masses. 



52 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

To carry out this preliminary step of seducing the Spanish 
legions, an officer was chosen in every way fitted for the task. 
This man was Augustin Iturbide, the same who betrayed the 
previous conspiracy aiming at Independence. By the exercise 
of a superior ferocity against the insurgents he had gained high 
favour with the Church and privileged classes. He was now 
rewarded with the delicate and important twofold mission of 
seducing the Spanish legions, and establishing a government in 
entire conformity with the financial and social interests of the 
Church and Aristocracy. 

Entirely ignorant of the plans of the conspirators, and com- 
pletely under the influence of the Church, the Virrey Apodaca 
walked blandly into the net spread for him. At the instigation 
of his ecclesiastical advisers, he duly appointed Iturbide com- 
mander-in-chief of the army, and ordered him to lead a contin- 
gent southward against the guerilla bands of Vincente Guerrero 
and Pedro Asencio, the last bulwarks of the people's Revolution. 
The exigencies of the recent warfare had distributed the 
royal army in widely sundered parts of the country. Con- 
sequently Iturbide was able to mobilize at first only a compara- 
tively small force of some five thousand men. A few days after 
leaving Mexico City, however, in accordance with the prear- 
ranged plans of his fellow-conspirators, he began sending urgent 
messages to the Virrey, requesting substantial reinforcements 
and money for supplies. The Virrey innocently complied, as 
far as the necessities of the case permitted, and thus by the time 
Iturbide reached Teloloapan in the State of Morelos, in Decem- 
ber, 1820, he commanded an army of nearly ten thousand men. 
Here he lavishly banqueted his troops, and taking advantage of 
the festive spirit of the moment, suddenly unfolded to them his 
plans for proclaiming the independence of Mexico . The Spanish 
mercenaries knew only the Paymaster and the Priest. The 
Paymaster treated them handsomely and filled them with glow- 
ing promises of the future. The Priest warmly supported these 
promises with fierce anathemas for those who should continue 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 53 

to remain loyal to the impious and Liberal power of Spain — 
and the trick was done. Iturbide's proposals were enthusiasti- 
cally received, and the main purpose of the conspirators was 
accomplished. Similar scenes occurred at every military post 
in Mexico. The priests had carefully prepared the ground and 
the entire army fell into line, as had been anticipated, without a 
protest. The Virrey was still in complete ignorance of the con- 
spiracy; for the Church had acted throughout with that 
profound secrecy which has always characterized her political 
methods. Indeed, so far from suspecting himself betrayed, he 
considered himseK loyally served, and gladly complied with the 
suggestion of the Church that he should increase Iturbide's 
power. 

The new movement, now gathering tremendous momentum, 
was naturally fostered with particular zeal by religious orders 
whose suppression had been decreed throughout the Spanish 
Empire by the Liberal Congress of Spain. In Mexico City the 
very backbone of the revolutionary conspiracy was the order of 
Jesuits; while in Vera Cruz, Father Fra Jose de San Ignacio, 
general of the Order of Betlemitas, exhibited extraordinary 
activity in organizing all the influential people in his district 
under the banner of the Revolution, in obtaining supplies of 
money, and in lauding Iturbide as the "Saviour of religion and 
the Liberator of the Fatherland." 

If it was an easy matter to sway the allegiance of a mercen- 
ary horde, it was a quite different affair to win over the stubborn 
revolutionaries of the south. Again and again Iturbide dis- 
patched messengers to Guerrero, offering him wealth and a high 
position in the army for himself, and positions in the ranks for 
all his followers. Guerrero refused. He mistrusted this man 
who spoke so glibly of the sacred ideal of human liberty, and 
in the same breath offered him bribes. His was an extremely 
difficult position. Ignorant of the great change which had 
placed Spain and her possessions under a constitution as en- 
lightened and humane as the revolutionary constitution of 



54 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Apatzingam, ignorant of the dark conspiracy of the Church 
which aimed to destroy this enhghtened rule and to set up an 
independent despotism in Mexico, he was unable to grasp the 
true position of affairs. Hitherto, the only policy he had known 
was to fight to the death ; if not in the open, then in the fastnesses 
of those mountains which he had made the last stronghold of 
the cause of liberty. He and his followers were prepared to 
wait, if need be, for years for that odd chance which should 
enable them once more to take the aggressive in the glorious 
struggle for freedom. It was no easy matter, therefore, to 
trick, bribe, or cajole these men into surrender; for Guerrero 
was a man of the purest principles, a real revolutionist in whose 
heart burned the deepest passion for human liberty. 

Iturbide cherished the secret intention of proclaiming himself 
Emperor of Mexico when the opportune moment should arrive, 
and he recognized in this stubborn native farmer, Guerrero, a 
serious obstacle to his plans. Failing to cajole him into sur- 
render, he endeavoured to attack him in his mountain fastness. 
The position of the insurgents, however, was impregnable, and 
Iturbide retired, discomfited. Cajolery and force had both 
failed. Time was precious. Iturbide resorted to strategy. 
With the sanction of his fellow-conspirators he delivered his 
master-stroke. On the 24th of February, 1821, from the town 
of Iguala, in the State of Guerrero, he issued a manifesto which 
he caused to be distributed broadcast over the whole country. 
This manifesto, generally called El Plan de Iguala, proclaimed 
the following principles : 

I. The establishment of the Roman Catholic Apostolic 
Religion as the national religion, without toleration for any 
other. 

II. The absolute Independence of Mexico. 

III. The establishment of a monarchical form of govern- 
ment, tempered by a constitution suitable to the country. 

IV. The summoning of Fernando VII, or some member of his 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 55 

family, or of some other royal family, to the throne of Mexico, 
to reign as emperor and establish a dynasty. 

V. The establishment of a junta to carry on the government 
until the meeting of the Cortes. 

VI. Said junta to rule in virtue of an oath of allegiance to 
the King until the duties of government could be assumed by 
the monarch in person. 

VIII. That in the event of Fernando VII being unwilling 
to accept the throne of Mexico, the junta to continue the 
functions of government until such time as a suitable ruler be 
chosen. 

IX. The government to support and maintain the three 
warranties (Independence, Unity, and Religion, symbolized on 
the national flag by the colours red, white, and green) . 



XIII. The maintenance of the present institutions of 
property. 

XIV. The endorsement and protection of all ecclesiastical 
fueros, privileges, and possessions. 

In addition to the articles quoted there was a number of 
provisions dealing with the constitution of the army and ju- 
diciary, but we have sufficiently indicated the drift of the docu- 
ment. It would be difficult to find a more clear-cut expression 
of the class struggle in society than his manifesto affords us. 
In its entire scope, the peons, the Intellectuals — in fact, the 
whole body of the useful and vital element of the nation are 
completely ignored. The despotism of the Church and big 
land-owners, on the contrary, is affirmed as the supreme ruling 
factor of the nation. Not the collective intelligence, but the 
army, is made the support of the functions of government. 
The people are again nailed to the cross with the spikes of 
religious intolerance, military despotism, and economic abso- 
lutism. 



56 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The necessity of a monarchical form of government was very 
clearly defined in the minds of the conspirators. Reaction 
and monarchy are good yoke-fellows, while the republican form 
of government — even a pseudo-republican form of govern- 
ment — is by no means as amenable to control by the forces 
of Privilege. The manifesto was widely distributed over the 
whole country, blessed by the bishops, and promulgated by 
their agents. To the illiterate masses it was made to represent 
not only the salvation of their country but their own future 
redemption from poverty and wretchedness. 

Iturbide's scheme proved successful beyond his dreams. 
When Guerrero and his followers saw the people dazed in the 
glare of the false revolution, and blindly following it to their 
destruction, they surrendered. Of what use was a revolution 
which had lost the support of the great mass of the nation? 
Freedom was not yet — later perhaps. These unsophisticated 
leaders even hoped some benefit might accrue to the common 
people from territorial Independence; and for the rest, they 
saw that they must leave to the future the accomplishment of 
their revolutionary plans. 

" Guerrero and Iturbide met in the town of Teloloapan. The 
new hero of Mexico solemnly assured Guerrero that the land 
would be distributed to the people as soon as peace was re- 
stored.^ With this understanding the entire body of insurgents 
joined the ranks of the army, thus adding a very decisive 
strength to the movement." (Zamacois, "Historia de Mejico," 
Vol. X, pp. 671, 675.) Guerrero's example in joining forces 
with the false revolution was promptly followed by all the 
old insurgents scattered over the country. Naturally they 
saw in his action full warranty that Iturbide was honest in his 
motives. Thus the complete success of Iturbide's military 
masquerade was assured. 

From Iguala the combined force of insurgents and royalists 
now marched to Valladolid, where their ranks were further 
augmented by the local garrison. At the same time in Guad- 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 57 

alajara General Pedro Celestino Negrete, acting in concert 
with the Church, proclaimed his adherence to the Plan de 
Iguala. A great celebration was held at the cathedral, where 
the people were harangued by the noted theologian, Doctor 
San Martin. "The War for Independence," said he, "is a war 
for religion. Every one of us ought to be a soldier in its cause 
— the clergyman, secular, and regular; the aristocrat, the 
plebeian, the rich and the poor, the child and the adult — every 
one should shoulder a gun and march under the commands of 
our military chiefs, to fight and die, if need be, for honour and 
religion. O God! save the American Mexican Church, and 
save the Army, the protector of our Church!" (Zamacois, 
"Historia de Mejico," Vol. X, p. 741.) 

During the course of the summer of 1821 the garrisons of 
Queretaro, Monterey, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and Durango 
had declared themselves in favour of the new movement. On 
August 2d, 1821, Iturbide entered Puebla at the head of his 
army amid universal acclamation. Two days later a great 
Te Deum was celebrated in the cathedral, and Bishop Perez 
placed the climax on the mock-hero's career by publicly sug- 
gesting his enthronement as Emperor of Mexico. The Plan 
de Iguala, as drawn up by Iturbide himself, called for the plac- 
ing of Fernando VII, or some other member of European roy- 
alty, on the throne of Mexico. Neither Iturbide nor the Church 
had ever seriously contemplated such a step. Iturbide had 
long ago definitely determined to become emperor. With so 
large a personal following as he now had, an attempt to thwart 
him in his ambition would have been fatal to the plans of the 
Church. 

At this juncture the new Virrey, Don Juan de O'Donoju, the 
chief exponent of the Liberal policy in Spain, arrived at Vera 
Cruz. In face of the entirely unsuspected condition of affairs 
which he found confronting him, the new Virrey was utterly at a 
loss. He had been appointed by the new Liberal Congress not 
only to enforce the brilliant and humane constitution of Cadiz 



58 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

in Mexico, thereby suppressing the power of the Church and 
laying the foundation of a real democracy, but had likewise 
authority to recognize Mexico's independence as the best means 
of carrying into execution the common ideas of the revolution- 
ists of both countries. He now found himself confronted, not 
by the real Revolution of the people which he had been led to 
expect, but by a counter-revolution, a mere military uprising 
for the purpose of erecting an independent despotism in Mexico 
in definace of the Constitution of Spain. 

In view of the power attained by the new Revolution, com- 
promise was the new Virrey's only possible course. Accord- 
ingly, after an interchange of notes with Iturbide, he agreed 
to meet him at Cordova, in the State of Vera Cruz. Here, on 
the 24th of August, an agreement was entered into between 
Iturbide, representing Reaction in Mexico, and Don Juan de 
O'Donoju, representing Liberalism in Spain. Its provisions 
read as follows: 

I. It is agreed that this America be recognized as a sovereign 
and independent nation with the name of the Mexican Empire. 

II. That the government of this empire be organized as a 
constitutional monarchy. 

HI. That Fernando VII, or failing his acceptance, some 
member of the European royal families be invited to the throne 
of Mexico. In the event of such invitations meeting refusal, 
that the Cortes of the empire elect an emperor. 

IV. That the emperor hold his court in Mexico City, which 
is to be regarded henceforth as the capital of the empire. 

V. That a committee of two be appointed by His Excellency 
Senor O'Donoju to be dispatched as an embassy to the court 
of Spain to place a copy of this treaty in the hands of Fernando 
VII. 

VI. That, pending the organization of government, a pro- 
visional governing junta be established, consisting of the fore- 
most men of the country. 



THE REVOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE 59 

VII. That His Excellency Senor Don Juan de O'Donoju be a 
member of the junta. 

VIII. That the provisional governing junta appoint its 
chairman and a regency of three persons to hold the executive 
power until the assumption of office by the monarch. 

Like El Plan de Iguala, this treaty aimed at the speediest pos- 
sible enthronement of the privileged classes, and the consolida- 
tion of their power. Backed by Iturbide's powerful army, and 
the old insurgency duped into coalition or scattered to the 
winds, the privileged classes felt themselves to be amply secure 
at last, and able to dictate with assurance to all their enemies. 
It is interesting to notice the diplomatic clauses in this treaty 
referring to the summoning of Fernando VII to the throne. 
Too bold an announcement by Iturbide of his intentions of 
assuming the royal purple himself would have been highly im- 
politic at that moment, even if it had not thrown the Aristoc- 
racy, who were natural worshippers of royalty, into strong 
opposition. The conspirators were now well in the saddle. 
Independence and the dominance of Privileges were already 
accomplished facts. Insurgency was dead. To maintain the 
admirable status quOy however, it was necessary to keep the 
Army in high good humour. 

Absolutism depends — as indeed every form of class rule 
depends — everywhere and at all times on two forces for its 
support : the psychological and the physical. The first bends, 
the second breaks. The first, under the guise of religion, seeks 
to bind the spirit and stultify the intelligence of the people; 
the other, under the guise of patriotism, is constituted to destroy 
physically those who will not be bound or stultified. In the 
present case the power of the Catholic religion had suffered 
severely at the hands of the insurgents, even had not the spread 
of the philosophy of the French Revolution almost entirely 
discounted its doctrines among the Intellectuals. It was the 
more necessary, therefore, that the physical force represented 



60 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

by the Army should be well groomed and petted. To this end 
its officers were promoted wholesale, while the primitive love 
of the soldier for gewgaws was fed by the lavish distribution 
of cordons and medals and badges. Military vanity was 
further flattered by the creation of the "Imperial Order of the 
Mexican Eagle" for distinguished service. To crown the con- 
tent of the Army, the Church, in one long week of celebration, 
consecrated it to the service of the Most High under the title 
of "Army of God." 

Let us glance for a moment at the other side of the picture. 
In the fields toiled the peons, still tilling the land from dawn 
till dusk, under the lash of the master, still enduring the pangs 
of hunger and the darkness of ignorance — and now, sunk in 
unspeakable despair before the wreck of all their high hopes. 
The blood of comrades called from the ground: "Was it for 
this we died?" And the peon could find no answer. Away 
in the city thousands of Spanish soldiers, themselves the sons 
of the hungry, ignorant Spanish peasantry, were being feted and 
pampered, degraded to the level of sleek brutes — their highest 
office to perform the ferocious will of the master class; their 
highest ambition to beat back their oppressed brothers, should 
they arise once more out of their darkness and despair in cohorts 
battling toward the light. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE FIRST EMPIRE 

WERE we to compile a text-book of the Science of Govern- 
ment by a ruling class, for the use, for instance, of some young 
modern aspirant to power, the testimony of all history, from the 
most remote times, would compel us to divide our work into 
three main chapters: the first, on the necessity of religious in- 
struction for the people; the second, on the necessity of patriotic 
instruction for the people; the third, on the necessity of diverting 
the revolt of the people by instituting a campaign of foreign 
aggression, or by inviting the invasion of the home country by a 
foreign army. Herein Hes the entire science of government by 
class rule. 

Far deep in the history of the race, in times so remote that only 
archaeological research is able to piece together the social rec- 
ords, arose the practice of trading on what is termed the 
" religious instinct " of man on the part of the priest class. This 
term "religious instinct" is in reality but another name for the 
deep, obhquely expressed desire of the partially awakened man 
to become initiate in that science of mind which he dimly di- 
vines will emancipate him from the fear which is ignorance, 
eradicate the reflex matter-impulses which he calls his passions, 
and make him altogether human, the supreme master of himself 
and his environment. 

To toy with, to pervert, to trade upon, to debauch, and to 
frustrate this pure central instinct of Hfe for the purposes of 
oppression and plunder has been the work of priestcraft in all 
ages and climes. 

61 



62 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The &st despotism, a despotism that was worldwide before 
Egypt was born, was built upon the skilful and unscrupulous 
manipulation of this sacred fundamental instinct. The same 
-despotism persists to-day. From the profound craft of the 
prehistoric Druid to the polished cynicism of the mediaeval 
Jesuit, and the vulgar cunning of his modern exemplar, the pro- 
cess of manipulation persists, identical in essence, differing only 
in form. Nothing less than univeral scientific education, such as 
might subsist under a CoUectivist administration of society, can 
ever destroy it. This, the Church knows well, and herein lies 
the secret of her fierce rage against the modern movement toward 
Collectivism, and against the sociological analyses generally 
grouped under the name of the Socialist Philosophy. 

Again, it seems a truism to say that a country can belong only 
to the people who own it. Yet this fact has not yet been per- 
ceived by the great majority of the property less workers. Under 
the careful patriotic instruction of the master class, millions of 
men have shed, and are still ready to shed, their life-blood, 
fighting for what they have conceived and still conceive to be 
"their" country, when few of them can show title to so much as 
a square foot of it. They do not yet perceive that the country 
they fight for is the master's country, and that they fight only 
because they are hypnotized by the pulpit and press and hired 
orator into the insubstantial belief that it is their "duty and 
glory " thus to fight. Least of all do they perceive that in nine 
cases out of ten they are induced to fight simply to divert their 
energy from its legitimate function of enforcing economic 
reform. 

The third chapter of our text-book, we said, should deal with 
the necessity of diverting domestic revolt by instituting a cam- 
paign of foreign aggression, or by inviting foreign invasion. A 
ruling class in deadly peril from the revolt of an oppressed work- 
ing class, and unable to cope alone with the conflagration it has 
invoked, has, in the final analysis, only three possible courses 
before it: First, to abandon its power to the people, and by 



THE FIRST EMPIRE 63 

sufferance, if not by actual cooperation, to permit the inception 
of a true democracy; second, to inflame the people through the 
medium of the pulpit, press, and platform, with a false patriot- 
ism, and betray them into conflict with another nation, thus 
diverting their collective will and strength from economic re- 
form to so-called national glory; third — and this last method 
we wish to emphasize somewhat, since it is the one chiefly fa- 
voured by the decadent ruling class of Mexico — to invite the 
invasion or assistance of a foreign army. 

Such assistance as is predicated in the last alternative is never 
far to seek. The ruling classes of the world readily support one 
another in the subjugation of proletarian revolts, for here their 
interests are entirely mutual. A successful proletarian revolt 
in any country of the world, however remote from the centres of 
civilization, is a tremendous menace to every other ruling class. 
There remains, of course, a yet more immediate reason for such 
ready assistance — the pay is good. Be it in the form of mythi- 
cal claims which are allowed by the assisted nation in favour of 
the assisting, or in the form of secretly ceded territory, or com- 
mercial strangle-holds, the pay is always suflaciently attractive 
for its own sake. 

If to the uninitiated mind there seems an element of incredi- 
ble treachery and ruffianism in this violation of national integ- 
rity and shedding of innocent blood on the part of the ruling 
class in order to head off the march of the people toward freedom 
and light, it can only be said that the unswerving testimony of 
history — and by history we mean the systematized researches 
of unbiased investigators, and not the official or inspired chroni- 
cles of the master class — amply attests the constant use of this 
method. To the sophisticated mind and blunted moral sense 
of the oppressor such methods are neither good nor bad — they 
are expedient. Any ruling class will waste seas of blood, and 
drag the national honour in the dust, rather than relinquish its 
grip on the throat of its victim — the people. By the law of its 
being it must preserve its dominance, or cease to be. 



64 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

We have not yet dealt with the first possible course which 
presents itself to the ruling class when confronted with the grow- 
ing power of the people — i. e., abdication. History bears no 
record of any such abdication; its possibility is purely theoretical. 
But the last two alternatives with which we have dealt above 
constitute the raison d'etre of nearly all the conflicts of history. 
Behind war is found at last the terror of the master class before 
the advancing Spectre of Democracy. Occasionally, indeed, 
the various ruling classes quarrel among themselves over the 
division of territory and then, before the lust of imperial expan- 
sion and commercial supremacy has been satisfied, hundreds of 
thousands of working women mourn their sons. But this cause 
of war is far less potent than the others mentioned above. 

The unsophisticated mind of the working class is, and has 
been, throughout the centuries, but clay in the hands of the skil- 
ful potter — the master class. By the aid of judicious religious 
and patriotic instruction, coupled with the final appeal, in case 
of revolt, to the methods of foreign aggression, or invited home 
invasion, it has been possible for an insignificant minority to 
reign as supreme lord and master of the great majority, system- 
atically robbing them — through the evolving economic systems 
— chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism — of the fruits of 
their labour, and maintaining them in a state of bovine ignor- 
ance and acquiescence during the process. This is the entire 
Science of Government by class rule. 

In the course of this history we shall see the weakened and 
debauched ruling class of Mexico taxing the three great expedi- 
ents of government to the utmost. Now thundering excommu- 
nications against the popular revolt through the mouth of the 
Church, anon leading an army of peon-patriots from their proper 
work of economic reform into an infamous attack on Texas; 
again, inviting a French, a Spanish, and later, an American in- 
vasion, to head off the march of democracy. 

That the mills of the gods were grinding surely, albeit exceed- 
ing slowly in Mexico, is indicated by the fact that the Revolu- 



THE FIRST EMPIRE 65 

tion which had given Spain a modern Constitution had brought 
a new and permanent factor into the poKtical field. This was 
the Liberal party which henceforth both in Spain and in Mexico 
was destined to carry on the struggle of the people against the 
reactionary forces of the Church, Army, and Aristocracy, repre- 
sented by the Conservative party. 

The new nation was now fairly launched on its independent 
career. Thanks to the adroitness of the Church and Iturbide's 
Spanish mercenaries, the privileged classes were as firmly en- 
trenched in power as before the Revolution. The junta, which 
under the provisions of Article IV of the Treaty of Cordova was 
to assume the functions of government ad interim, consisted 
entirely of bishops, generals, and aristocrats to the number of 
thirty under the presidency of Iturbide. The junta had scarcely 
taken office before its sole Liberal member — the noble Don 
Juan de O'Donoju, came to a sudden and mysterious end — poi- 
soned, it is strongly suspected, by Iturbide at the instigation of 
the Church.* 

According to the provisions laid down in the Treaty of Cor- 
dova this junta exercised the functions of a consultative body, 
with legislative powers, electing from among its own members 
an executive, or regency of five. Of this regency Iturbide was 
likewise president. We see him, therefore, in supreme control of 
both government and army. The first step of the junta on ex- 
ercising office was to summon the people to elect members to 
Congress. In order safely to exclude any candidate of Liberal 
ideas an ingenious system of triplex indirect elections was de- 
vised. Under this system the people were instructed to elect 
delegates from each town; the municipal councilmen were then 
to exercise the right of deciding in secret session which delegates 
received the majority vote; finally, these delegates were to elect 
the representative to Congress. To make assurance doubly 
sure these municipal councils were to act under the chairmanship 
of the curate of the town; while in order to further refine the 

*See Zamacois' "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 11, p. 20. 



66 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

process of selection it was decreed that a delegate must be a 
clergyman, a soldier, a lawyer, or a land-owner. Meanwhile, 
the press was effectually throttled by the establishment of a 
rigid military censorship. The destiny of the new nation had 
fallen into the hands of those least fitted for rule — the Soldier 
and the Priest, ever to be found hand in hand, opposing with 
brutality and ignorance every attempt of the people toward 
progress. 

The Liberals, unable to fight openly, strove as well as they 
could under the cover of the Masonic Lodges, to save the nation. 
Among other activities they endeavoured to found secular schools 
on the Lancasterian or mutual instruction system. Hitherto 
all education had been carried on in Catholic schools and 
seminaries, where the mind of childhood and youth had been nec- 
essarily perverted and dwarfed to the exigencies of ecclesiastical 
dominance. By the establishment of these secular schools the 
Liberals sought to remedy this abuse, and to lay the foundation for 
a more enlightened generation. Meanwhile, the old insurgents 
who had joined Iturbide's army had begun to realize how com- 
pletely they had been duped. Instead of the distribution of the 
lands and the economic readjustments they had been promised, 
they were compelled to witness that great democratic spirit 
which had found voice in the Congress of Apatzingam utterly 
betrayed at the hands of the new ecclesiastical and military des- 
potism; and the old spirit of revolt began to brew among them. 

The new administration was already seriously embarrassed 
for funds. While the upkeep of a vast army and an avaricious 
military caste necessitated enormous expenditure, the disorgani- 
zation of the times had emptied the treasury. The Church, 
therefore, as matter of self-protection, agreed to furnish the 
government a loan of two million dollars, without interest, tak- 
ing as security the revenues derived from the seaport customs. 
By way of reward, the governing junta agreed to recognize the 
Pious funds of California as a national indebtedness to the Church 
in spite of the fact that this fund, amounting to nearly two 



THE FIRST EMPIRE 67 

million dollars, had been cancelled by the Virrey in colonial 
times in compliance with the royal pragmatica of Charles III of 
Spain for the suppression of the Jesuits. Thus was laid on the 
backs of the people a load of indebtedness merely to bribe the 
services of an army in which officers outnumbered privates. 

On the 24th of February, 1822, one year after the Declaration 
of Independence, the new Congress, consisting of one hundred 
and two delegates, met in Mexico City. When — the inevita- 
ble celebrations and Te Deums ended — -Congress at length set- 
tled to the serious business demanded by the critical conditions 
of the hour, it proceeded to waste day after day in the minute 
consideration and discussion of such matters as the indulgences 
granted to the Mexicans by the Pope of Rome for their loyalty 
to the Church, and the authorization of papal decrees in matters 
of feasting and fasting. From such deliberations as these it 
finally turned to more earthly affairs, and decreed the mainte- 
nance of a standing army of seventy thousand men — to main- 
tain peace in a country of only seven million population! 

In spite of the elaborate precautions of the Church a certain 
number of representatives of Liberal ideas had succeeded in be- 
ing elected to the Congress; and their spirited opposition to the 
clerical bloc was instrumental, at least, in giving wide publicity 
to the conspiracy which was being perpetrated against the people 
in the name of government. These fighting tactics of the 
Liberal party, backed by the rising discontent of the old insur- 
gents, kept the administration in a state of constant alarm. 
Finally, when the Liberals proceeded bitterly to criticize Itur- 
bide in person he accused them before Congress of treachery to 
the country and had them imprisoned. 

It will be remembered that in the Treaty of Cordova provision 
had been made for the appointment of a member of the royal 
family of Spain to the throne of Mexico. So far Congress had 
made no effort to carry this provision into execution. The 
reason for its inertia in the matter is not far to seek. Congress 
knew perfectly well that the Spanish royal family was quite 



68 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

averse to such a proposal, and that the ecclesiastical and mili- 
tary designs necessitated the appointment of Iturbide as Em- 
peror of Mexico. Indeed, Iturbide's well proven fanatical 
devotion to the Church, and his false prestige as "Liberator of 
Mexico," and Commander-in-chief of the "Army of God'* 
marked him out as preeminently the man best fitted for the po- 
sition. This matter of appointing a sovereign had now thor- 
oughly matured and the moment was ripe for action. 

In order to give a veneer of popular election to Iturbide's 
nomination, the soldiers were induced to go through the farce of 
proclaiming him emperor. On the night of the 18th of August, 
1822, a sergeant of the army headed his company in a parade 
through the streets of Mexico City shouting: "Viva Augustin 
the First, Emperor of Mexico ! " The entire garrison of the city 
immediately joined in the parade. In a few minutes the streets 
were crowded with soldiery, and hoodlums hired for the purpose, 
who lustily shouted the same cry. The following day similar 
scenes were enacted, and the excited hordes, directed and in- 
flamed by the priests and friars, stormed the hall of Congress, 
where only a few representatives already in the plot were in 
session, and demanded, in the name of the nation, that Iturbide 
be proclaimed Emperor of Mexico. The "Rump Congress" 
complied, and Iturbide was duly appointed. 

The first act of the new Emperor was to reward his soldiers. 
Again the army delivered itself up to a general Saturnalia of 
feasting and drinking, beneath a fresh shower of gaudy cordons, 
medals, and decorations. In order to give the new court the 
aristocratic leavening so beloved of the parasites, a new order — 
"The Knights of Guadalupe" — was created, and in the official 
gold-trimmed dress of the order — short trousers, and broad- 
brimmed hats lavishly adorned with ostrich plumes — the new 
knights displayed themselves with the utmost content. The 
capital and entire country indulged in festivities, in which 
William Taylor and General Wilkinson, the envoys of the 
United States, took part in an official capacity. 




VINCENTE GUERRERO — PRESIDENT OF MEXICO IN 1827 

The "Great Commoner of Mexico" who decreed religious freedom, and abolished 

chattel slavery and peonage 



-^- 




THE FIRST EMPIRE 69 

It was at this juncture of affairs that the most fascinating 
character in Mexican history appeared on the scene in the person 
of Fra Servando Teresa de Mier, better known as the Bishop of 
Baltimore. Although a member of a religious order, so radical 
were this priest's ideas that the Holy Inquisition, deeming him 
in need of discipline, imprisoned him, and finally dispatched him 
to Rome as a penitent. The Pope was greatly impressed with 
the vast learning and radiant wit of this strange penitent, and 
punished him by appointing him Bishop of Baltimore in the 
United States, a city in which he was already well known and 
greatly loved. Instead, however, of proceeding to his new dio- 
cese the Bishop joined the Revolution in Spain. Here he was 
arrested by the royalist authorities, but finally escaped to the 
United States, where he learned that during his absence the 
people of his native state of Nuevo Leon had elected him a repre- 
sentative to Congress. He immediately set out for Mexico 
City, but was again arrested by the captain of a Spanish war 
cruiser. Once more, however, he managed to effect his release, 
and arrived in Mexico City in time to take his place in the coun- 
cils of the nation, just after Iturbide's scandalous seizure of the 
imperial throne. 

His natural genius, tempered by deep learning and cosmopoli- 
tan culture, made him at once the leader of the fighting Liberal 
minority in the House, and the highly unwelcome opponent of 
the clerical bloc. Before his polished wit and searing satire the 
Emperor was entirely discomfited, and the great mass of the 
people, disgusted as they were with the recent unscrupulous 
coup d'etat took fresh heart. The Bishop comprehended the 
situation at a glance, and through the columns of the Liberal 
press, in the hall of Congress, on the public platform, and in the 
private conclave, poured such a stream of ridicule upon this 
absurd Emperor, his Knights of Guadalupe, his tinselled sol- 
diery and tawdry court, that even those who had helped to place 
Iturbide in power felt abashed before their handiwork. It was 
a case of "those who came to pray remained to scoff," and the 



70 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

witty Bishop, by giving the empire the real colour of comic 
opera, contributed very materially to its downfall. 

As we have previously mentioned, the political struggle was 
mainly directed from the secret conclaves of the Masonic Lodge. 
In Mexico at that time Masonry was divided into two factions 
— the Scottish Rite, Catholic in personnel, and the York Rite, 
Liberal in personnel. In these two factions appears the division 
of a society in which the main executive power was the Army. 
Here we have a decided rearrangement of forces. Under the 
Spanish regime the Church, in virtue of her enormous wealth 
and psychological control of the people, was the supreme ruling 
power. The Revolution of Independence, however, had substi- 
tuted for the economic and psychological control of the Church 
the brute force of arms. Henceforth the Army was the real 
commanding power of the nation. The Church, now only able 
to maintain her privileges by the use of armed force, and unable 
herself to take the field, was compelled to depend on the military 
support. In this wise was established the *'Pretorian" system 
of "cuartelazo,"* as it is called in Spanish. For the last hun- 
dred years this system has been the one great obstacle in the 
struggle of the Mexican people toward democracy. We shall 
find it being invoked again and again to the utter wreckage of 
all civil institutions. 

The attacks of the Liberal party in Congress on the adminis- 
tration had become so formidable that Iturbide, on the 26th of 
August, 1822, ordered eleven of them to be arrested and im- 
prisoned. A few days later, foreseeing that even the remaining 
Conservative members might oppose his imperial will, he ordered 
the complete dissolution of Congress, thus constituting himself 
the sole ruler of the nation. It is at this juncture that the sinis- 
ter General Santa Ana makes his first appearance in Mexican 



*Cuartel is the Spanish equivalent for the EngHsh "barracks," and "azo" 
an affix indicating repetition of action. Cuartelazo, then, is a term of contempt 
for a miUtary uprising, destitute of civil foundation, and culminating in a mili- 
tary despotism devoid of respect for civil law. The military uprising by which 
Iturbide seized the imperial throne was a typical " cuartelazo." 



THE FIRST EMPIRE 71 

history, supplicating Iturbide for the honour of suppressing 
Congress by mihtary force — a fitting entry, indeed, for a man 
who was destined to deluge his country in blood and drag the 
national honour into the deepest disgrace. 

Congress was dissolved, but before the dissolution had been 
accomplished the Conservative bloc had been instructed to enact 
a law authorizing the government to issue a foreign loan of 
$30,000,000, secured on the entire national revenues — this, 
also, to feed the voracious maw of the Army. The insurgents 
and Liberals were now thoroughly aroused. They had never 
forgiven Iturbide his royalist activities against the insurgents; 
they had seen him wrap himself in the mantle of Independence 
only to impose a worse despotism upon the people; they had 
laughed in bitterness before his farcical assumption of the im- 
perial purple; they now beheld in his cynical dissolution of Con- 
gress the complete demolition of their last hope for the better- 
ment of the people. Soon, however, they were to witness the 
downfall of the false hero at the hands of the very faction that 
placed him in power. 

The student of Mexican history is often surprised and bewil- 
dered by the apparently inexplicable inconsistencies of the 
clerical policy. It would seem, at first glance, that the high 
prelates of the Church were men of weak, vacillating minds. 
The act of to-day is reversed to-morrow; the favourite of one 
hour is the victim of the next. On a deeper view of the matter, 
however, this extravagance reveals itself as the necessary sinu- 
osity of a deep, tenacious purpose — the protection at all costs 
of the material interests of the Church. As we have indicated, 
from the time of the Independence to the present day the Church 
in Mexico has been compelled to use the Army for her own pro- 
tection and the organization of government. The military, 
however, are egotistical, vain, and profoundly ignorant of 
the principles of sociology. Discipline makes them me- 
chanical, and thus tempered they are the less potent for evil. 
When, however, freed from discipline, they assume the leader- 



72 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE h 

ship of society, their unsocial training, ignorance and egotism, 
coupled with a sense of the basic immorality of their position as 
the tool of a faction, make them not only thoroughly unfitted to 
rule, but often make them positively dangerous to the faction 
which employs them. Thus, subsequent to the Indepen- 
dence, the Church was compelled to enter the race for power, 
mounted on a horse which, none too well broken, often 
refused to run straight, and sometimes bolted off the course: 
hence the apparent inconsistencies of her policy. Could the 
Church have ruled directly, matters would have had an en- 
tirely different aspect; but Mexico, backward as she was in com- 
parison with the rest of the civilized world at that time, was yet 
too far advanced to permit a theocratic rule. Prsetorianism, 
therefore, was the Church's sole recourse. 

The bitter hatred with which Iturbide was regarded by the 
Liberals and insurgents, and his increasing unpopularity with 
even the Conservatives themselves, showed clearly to the astute 
prelates of the time that he must be sacrificed if another disas- 
trous popular revolt was to be averted. They accordingly de- 
creed his downfall. To dethrone the emperor of a day the same 
tactics were adopted as were used to enthrone him. A cuartel- 
azo was invoked against him under the leadership of that same 
Santa Ana who had shown such eagerness to aid in the dissolu- 
tion of Congress. 

Iturbide realized the situation at a glance — and accepted it. 
An emperor, spawned by the Church and cuartelazo, he was too 
familiar with the tactics of both to offer a futile resistance. 
When he found himself deserted by his adoring army he sum- 
moned the Congress he had dissolved, and endeavoured to effect 
a dignified retreat by formally presenting them with his resigna- 
tion, merely requesting his salary for service in the Revolution 
of Independence. Congress repudiated his resignation and 
banished him to Italy under pain of death. Later, in obedience 
to the secret summons of the Church, he returned, landing at 
Sotol a Marina in the state of Tamaulipas. Here he was ar- 



THE FIRST EMPIRE 73 

rested by the local authorities under the direction of the Liberal 
governor, Gutierrez de Lara, convicted of defying the decree 
of the National Congress, and executed. 

Thus ended the comedy known in Mexican history as the First 
EmpirCo 



CHAPTER VII 
THE REPUBLIC 

THE PRESIDENCY OF GUADALUPE VICTOiRIA 

THE Liberal party was now about to enjoy a brief period of 
power. Taking vigorous advantage of the confusion of the 
Church and Army, occasioned by the downfall of Iturbide and 
his subsequent execution, it forced Congress formally to declare 
Mexico a federal republic. 

The Church, momentarily demoralized by her recent dis- 
astrous experiment, and seeing no immediate possibility of 
establishing a monarchy of royal blood in Mexico, accepted the 
situation for the nonce. Her discontent was the less bitter in 
that the new federal system was not essentially antagonistic to 
her immediate interests. Certainly, by the large measure of 
autonomy with which it endowed the provinces, federalism 
paved the way for a possible piecemeal demolition of her power; 
but for the present it left intact her spiritual monopoly, privi- 
leges, fueros, and general material interests. The Church 
acquiesced, and bided her time, confident in her power to over- 
throw the new order at a more convenient moment. 

On the 4th of October, 1824, the constitution establishing 
the federal system which had been drafted by Congress was 
proclaimed. It provided that: 

"Each state be granted the right to frame its own constitu- 
tion, in conformity with the republican principles of general 
popular election, and the division of power into executive, leg- 
islative, and judiciary. 

74 



THE REPUBLIC 75 

"Each state be granted the right to protect freedom of speech 
and of the press, and to carry on all its affairs with complete 
independence, as a sovereign entity. 

"Representatives and Senators in each state be chosen by 
direct popular election. 

"The President and Vice-President of the nation be elected 
by the state legislatures, each legislature to have the right to 
vote for two different candidates, the National Congress to 
appoint as President the candidate holding the majority of 
votes, and as Vice-President, the candidate polling the largest 
minority." 

Such, in brief, were the political concessions gained by the 
people. The Catholic religion, however, was recognized as the 
national religion to the exclusion of every other form of faith, 
the Church property and privileges were fully respected, and 
the iniquitous clerical and military fueros were upheld. Under 
the circumstances, the gain to the common people was more 
apparent than real. Power in the last analysis is always 
economic power, and this still remained, and was bound to 
remain, under any political system short of Collectivism, 
in the hands of Privilege. It was under such conditions 
that General Guadalupe Victoria became first President of the 
Republic. 

As we have previously mentioned, the last act of the Rump 
Congress before its final dissolution by Iturbide was to author- 
ize the flotation of a foreign loan to the amount of $30,000,000. 
Under that authority. President Victoria now proceeded to 
contract a first loan of $20,000,000, and English bankers fur- 
nished the entire amount, at 8 per cent, interest secured on 
the national revenue. During the preliminary negotiations, 
the Church and Monarchists managed to force a stipulation 
on the President, entitling the Church to receive from the first 
disbursements of this loan, the original sum of $2,000,000 
loaned by her to the administration of Iturbide. In addition, 
they demanded that the sum of $8,000,000 should further be 



76 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

recognized as the national indebtedness to Spain for her services 
against the insurgents. 

The United States, which had viewed Mexico's imperiahstic 
experiment with mixed feehngs, promptly recognized the new 
Republic, and dispatched B. Joel Poinsett as Minister to Mex- 
ico City to represent her interests. At this time, the strug- 
gle in the United States between the feudal aristocracy of the 
South and the industrial quasi-democracy of the North, which 
later was destined to deluge the nation in blood, had reached 
only the stage of political intrigue. In the enormous industrial 
development of the free Northern States, the Southern States, 
sunk in the stagnation which attends chattel slavery, saw the 
impending doom of their political and economic dominance. 
With a view to correcting the balance of power, they had already 
begun to cast envious eyes on Texas — at that time a Mexican 
state, populated largely by slave-holding American colonists. 
Could Texas by force or fraud be wrested from Mexico, her 
slave-holding representatives in the United States Congress 
would materially help the South to maintain her cherished 
supremacy. 

Minister Poinsett's particular mission in Mexico,* there- 
fore, was to insinuate himself into the Mexican political intrigue 
of the time with a view to bribing the discontented factions, 
likely at any moment to regain power, with the promise of 
recognition and support from the United States in return for 
the concession of Texas. Greatly aided in his mission by his 
standing as a Mason, he was enabled to enter actively into the 
intrigues of the Masonic rites — the real parliament of Mexico 
— and to lay the foundations for the embroglio which finally 
made Texas a part of the United States. 

For a time, the new Republic, under President Victoria, 
seemed to be prospering. A more or less troubled peace had 
succeeded to the wild disorder of the past. The privileges of 



*See G. L. Rives' "The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848," Vol. I, pp. 
161-170. 



THE REPUBLIC 77 

the Church were fully respected: the exchequer held sufficient 
funds for the regular payment of the army; and the Liberals, in 
the brief enjoyment of a certain tolerance, were contentedly 
busy in the propagation of their ideas. Even the peons, though 
as poor as ever, and still bearing on their backs the entire 
burden of the national production, were now free from the 
excessive taxation of the past. For them, also, there seemed 
some faint gleam of better things on the horizon. 

In order to understand the immense influence of the Church 
in Mexico at this time, it is necessary for us to glance for a mo- 
ment at the question of education. Throughout the colonial 
regime and up to the presidency of Victoria, the clergy had en- 
tire control of the rudimentary school system, the seminaries, 
and the colleges. Under this system, superstition took the 
place of ethics, and a fanatical admiration for militarism took 
the place of history, science, and art; while the entire plan of 
instruction and discipline was carefully calculated to bind the 
student in physical, intellectual, and moral slavery. 

To quote the brilliant author of the '*Life of Juarez":* "The 
life of the seminaries was a tiresome one. The monotony of 
the classes, the corporal punishments, the incessant fasting, 
the same daily routine of prayer, repeated again and again, 
the lack of healthful recreation, and the gross ignorance of the 
superiors in matters of physiology and hygiene, degraded the 
students to the practice of secret and debasing vices. Nothing 
was taught in these seminaries of social intercourse, of good 
manners, or practical life. Education was deliberately used, 
by those who controlled it, as a weapon wherewith to break the 
spirit and subdue the conscience." 

The seminaries afforded education, such as it was, only to the 
children of the wealthy. The millions of the toilers of the soil 
were left in utter illiteracy. Such native intelligence as they 
possessed (and as a class the peons are possessed of good ability) 
was twisted and stunted by the inculcation of superstition and 

*G. Baz, " Vida de Juarez," p. 28. 



78 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

:jowardice at the hands of the priests. Particularly was the 
prospect of hell-fire, as a punishment for disobedience to the 
Church, held continually before them. Indeed, only thus could 
this vigorous and imaginative peasantry be successfully sub- 
jugated to the will of their masters. 

The Liberal party was by no means slow to use the opportun- 
ity for aggressive educational propaganda against the Church 
which the tolerance of the new regime temporarily permitted 
them. Nor was the Church slow to retaliate. Discouraged by 
the failure of the empire, and disgusted with the administration 
of the federal constitution, which, while it respected her own 
privileges, respected also the rights of others, the Church in 
desperation turned to Spain — the Spain she had but just be- 
trayed — as a means of salvation. In the secrecy of the Ma- 
sonic Lodge of the Scottish Rite — the rite of the aristocrat and 
ecclesiastic — a conspiracy to restore the colonial regime was 
strenuously carried on. So well did it succeed that the Spanish 
King was finally persuaded by the envoys of the conspirators 
to believe that, were he to land in Mexico, the entire nation 
would rise as one man to welcome him, and that a mere handful 
of soldiers would be sufficient to quell the resistance of the few 
malcontents who still desired independence. 

The principal leaders of the conspiracy were the fathers: 
Joaquin Arenas, Francisco Martinez, Hildago Tordesillas, and 
Amat, all of them members of the Royal Order of Santo Do- 
mingo de Guzman. In spite of the preliminary success of the 
plot, its final execution was delayed for some time by the inertia 
of the Army. Indeed, although many of the generals were 
prominent in the conspiracy, the main body of the soldiery 
proved to be too contented with the easy life and regular pay 
to make good material for another cuartelazo. 

The Liberals promptly took advantage of this weakened con- 
trol of the Church over the Army to force several anti-clerical 
measures through Congress. They were not very violent, it 
is true; indeed, every dictate of reason and morality was on 



THE REPUBLIC 79 

their side; but in the eyes of the Church they constituted a 
formidable precedent. One of these measures cleverly pitted 
the material interests of the military and clergy against each 
other by proposing the suppression of the revenues of the friars 
of Alta and Baja California, and their appropriation to the use 
of the Army. When debated in the hall of Congress, it was 
clearly shown that these large funds had been diverted from the 
purpose for which they had been originally extorted from Mex- 
ico, and were used by the friars, not to convert the Indians of 
California, but to enslave and exploit them. Nevertheless, the 
Church, enraged and unabashed, threatened to provoke a mil- 
itary revolt if the measure were executed. 

Such a threat would have fallen impotent had the balance 
of the loan of $30,000,000, amounting to $10,000,000, promised 
by the English bankers, materialized. It did not, however, and 
the matter requires some explanation. The Church saw clearly 
that the Army, well and regularly paid, and therefore contented, 
was not amenable to her will; that with the arrival of the last in- 
stalment of the loan, the new administration would be more 
powerful than ever, the Army more content than ever, and that 
consequently all her own schemes for supremacy would miser- 
ably fail. Curiously enough, at this juncture, the negotiations 
in the matter of the English loan began to weaken, and presently 
they failed altogether. In his "Leyes Fiscales," p. 28, Luis 
G. Labastida reveals the fact that the agents — good Clericals 
all of them — deliberately ruined the negotiations. The 
nation faced bankruptcy and disorganization, but the Church 
was saved! 

It was at this impasse in affairs that President Victoria's 
term expired. The failure of the London loan had created a 
financial panic in Mexico, and the Church, unable to control 
the situation, was completely outgeneralled in the ensuing elec- 
tion by the Liberals. The vigorous propaganda carried on by 
the latter during the tolerant regime of President Victoria now 
showed its fruits, and Vicente Guerrero was elected President 



80 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

— that same Guerrero who had so faithfully maintained the 
fight for freedom in the southern hills until duped into submis- 
sion by Iturbide. In the presidential race, the Church fell 
into the second place with the election of General Anastasio 
Bustamante, an old officer of the royalist army, as Vice- 
President. A little later we shall see this Bustamante play- 
ing a conspicuous role in the machinations of the Clerical 
party. 

The result of the elections took the Church altogether by 
surprise. She recognized with bitter chagrin that Guerrero 
in power would use his utmost efforts for the welfare of the 
common people; but she was not seriously alarmed. She counted 
fully on the loyalty of the new army to her interests, and par- 
ticularly in view of the financial embarrassment under which 
the new administration had come into power. She argued, 
correctly enough, that as soon as pay fell into arrears, and the 
Army became discontented, it would be a simple matter to 
invoke another cuartelazo and restore a military despotism. 
Or, indeed, if that plan failed, was there not the still flourishing 
conspiracy for invoking the return of the Spanish colonial 
regime? 

On the first of April, 1829, Guerrero was inaugurated Presi- 
dent, with Bustamante as Vice-President. It would be dif- 
ficult to find a more ill-matched pair, or better exemplars of the 
characteristics of the two contending factions. On the one 
side, the liberal-minded, magnanimous patriot; on the other, 
the fanatical and unscrupulous tool of the Church. On the day 
following the inauguration, the Church instituted a fierce cam- 
paign of vilification against the new President. 

Guerrero — as we have seen — was the Great Commoner 
of Mexico, a man of the people, one of the remnants of the old 
guard who had fought in the ranks of Hidalgo and Morelos. 
Duped into the army of Iturbide by his simple good faith, he 
had lived among bigotry and corruption and remained clean; 
he had lived among the pampered and corrupt military, and 



THE REPUBLIC 81 

had retained his high ideals of the rights of the people. Such a 
man was a fit mark for the intrigues of the Church. Such as 
these she has ever crucified. 

In the struggle which followed, the entire forces of the Army, 
Church, and Monarchists were lined up against Guerrero and 
the party of the people. To quote Zavala: *'No misrepresen- 
tation or falsehood was left unused by the Clericals against a 
man who was the personal representative of the people. 
Every day new falsehoods were uttered to sap the moral 
strength of the government, and undermine its power. The 
decrees of the cabinet were not met with justified censure, nor 
with accusations containing some semblance of truth, nor 
with the legitimate satire to which the abuses of bad govern- 
ment may be subjected. They were opposed by the lowest 
calumnies, the most impudent fabrications, and the most ob- 
scene accusations which wrath, rancour, and insolence could 
produce. " (Zavala, " Historia de las Revoluciones de Mexico," 
Vol. 2., p. 183. Also see Bancroft's "History of Mexico, " V, pp. 
77, 78, 79.) 

Scarcely had Guerrero assumed the reins of power when the 
conspiracy to restore the Spanish colonial regime began to as- 
sume dangerous proportions. Says Zavala in speaking of this 
period: "If we judge from appearances, we are forced to be- 
lieve that the Spanish Government had spies all over the 
country, as well as a host of hired writers and agitators busily 
at work provoking disorder and civil war." ("Ensayo His- 
torico de las Revoluciones en Mexico," Vol. I, p. 183.) 

Behind the Spanish activities lay the conspiracy of the 
Church in Mexico. At all costs Guerrero was to be harassed, 
and prevented from giving his attentions to the reforms so 
urgently required for the country's welfare. Here, we see the 
ruling class following the precedent of the ruling class of all 
time and of all countries, in diverting domestic reform by in- 
viting a foreign invasion. Such an invasion must be met, and 
reforms, even such as are fundamental to the national existence, 



82 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

must be laid aside for the nonce, and an undivided front pre- 
sented to the enemy. 

The trick worked on this occasion, as it had worked a thou- 
sand times before, and as it will continue to work so long as 
society is divided into possessing and non-possessing classes. 
The news suddenly arrived at the Mexican capital that the 
Spanish fleet had been sighted off Tampico. At once the 
business of domestic reform receded to the background, and 
Guerrero had to summon the people to the defence of the 
country. Lured by the representations of the Church into the 
belief that his invasion would meet with little resistance, the 
King of Spain had at last consented to dispatch an armed force 
against Mexico. It landed at Tampico in 1829, but instead of 
the ready welcome it had anticipated, it was forced to face the 
furious onslaught of the unorganized insurgent peasantry of 
the old revolutionary states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and 
Vera Cruz. In spite of the deliberate bungling and interfer- 
ences of a number of corrupt army ojfficers, who appeared on the 
scene, ostensibly to take charge of the defence, but in reality to 
hamper it, the Spanish troops were swiftly swept into the sea. 

The fighting had been done almost spontaneously — with 
scarcely any direction — by the people of the locality, most of 
whom were small land-owners. The enemy defeated and dis- 
persed, these sturdy farmers returned to their homes and thought 
no more of the matter; but the partisans of the Church, the 
army officers who had arrived on the scene for the purpose of 
treacherously cooperating with the invaders, executed a nimble 
volte-face, when they found their plans had miscarried. They 
now boldly took the entire credit of the expulsion to themselves, 
and returned to Mexico City, the self-announced liberators of 
the country, and the mock heroes of the hour, with Santa Ana 
as the chief *'hero.'* The Church promptly took the cue, and 
covered her chagrin and terror at the abortion of her treachery 
by enthusiastically welcoming the victors and celebrating elab- 
orate Te Deums in the cathedral. In all of this. President 



1 



THE REPUBLIC 83 

Guerrero was studiously ignored; and to the simple folk, un- 
learned in treachery, intrigue, and cabal, it seemed that the 
Church and her Army, and not the rugged insurgents of the 
coast, were the real saviours of the country. 

The tactics of the Church and Army could repress the 
political expression of the new ideals, but they were unable alto* 
gether to repress the propaganda of these ideals among the peo- 
ple. Under the freedom and security of Guerrero's presidency, 
the Liberals continued the good work begun in the days of 
Guadalupe Victoria, and by press, platform, and book, pro- 
claimed far and wide the great principles of the French Revolu- 
tion. That the leavening was beginning to work became evident 
when whole bodies of the peasantry began to refuse to pay 
tithings. 

In the meantime Guerrero had abolished the last vestige of 
chattel slavery which still persisted in Mexico. The influence 
of this abolition went far to break up the bondage of peonage 
and serfdom. From this time the peons began to move from 
estate to estate as opportunity beckoned; and the government 
accorded a moral if not legal sanction to this slackening of the 
toilers' bond. 

In addition to these measures, Guerrero interpreted the con- 
stitution in regard to religious matters, with characteristic 
liberality, declaring that if oflScial sanction was withheld from 
any form of faith other than the Catholic, this by no means 
implied that the holding of another form of faith constituted 
an offence in the eyes of the law — an interpretation that was 
tantamount to the proclamation of religious liberty. 

If the abolition of slavery and the undermining of peonage 
infuriated the great land-owners, this practical proclamation 
of religious liberty aroused the Church to frenzy. She foresaw 
clearly that for every independent religious thinker there would 
be a corresponding loss of tithings and Church taxes. 

Guerrero had held office scarcely twelve months. The Church 
had not wasted her time ; already her plans were ripe. Suddenly 



84 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

she struck. Vice-President Bustamante, obedient to his or- 
ders, started a cuartelazo in Jalapa to overthrow the President. 
In his harangue to his troops he declared : " The government has 
entirely neglected to uphold the privilege and welfare of the 
Army, while all its activities are given to the benefit of the 
lowest class, which has never given to the country the glorious 
services of the soldier." Bustamante's command alone num- 
bered ten thousand men, and its traitorous example was speed- 
ily followed by the garrisons in Campeche, Yucatan, Tampico, 
Vera Cruz, and Mexico City. With scarcely a word of warning 
and within a few hours, Guerrero found himself deserted by the 
entire army, and forsaken even by his personal followers. 

Stricken to the heart, not so much by the onslaught of his 
enemies as by the desertion of those whom he had deemed his 
trusted friends, Guerrero left Mexico City with a few hundred 
soldiers to seek support among the peasantry. A few days 
later these soldiers also deserted him, to join the main army in 
rebellion. Meanwhile Congress, obedient to the Church, for- 
mally deposed him from office, declaring him to be insane, and 
unfitted to hold authority. 

On the 1st of June, 1830, the Church and Army, acting in 
consort, declared Bustamante President of the Republic, with 
Lucas Alaman, a powerful, subtle, and devoted friend of the 
Church, as Minister of Foreign Relations and of the Interior. 
By this one masterly stroke the powers of reaction were again 
triumphant. 

We shall divine, rather than see, a great deal of Alaman during 
the ensuing period of Mexican history. A man of great ability 
and deep learning, but obsessed with an unscrupulous and fa- 
natical devotion to the interests of the Church, he remained for 
years the unobtrusive but all-powerful executor of the Clerical 
policies. His immediate task in this instance was the crushing 
out of the spirit of revolt among the peons, and to this he set 
himself with the same energy and pitiless zeal that characterized 
all his evil career. 




Copyright by Underwood &° Underwood, 
NATIVE MAYA GIRLS 
Typical scene in the " tierra caliente" (hot country) in southern Mexico. 
Mayas are one of the original Mexican tribes, whose antecedents 
date back as far as the Aztecs and Toltecs 



N. Y. 



The 




Plioin^ra p/i hy Broun Bros. 

ORE SORTING 

At one of the rich mines at Guanajuato, central Mexico. Though sympathetic 

to the revolution the labourers in these industrial communities are 

not its mainstay, as are the toilers in the soil 




NATIVE SILVER SMELTER 

A small smelter in the interior in which all the crude, old-time methods of the 
early Spanish miners are still used 



THE REPUBLIC 85 

Guerrero retired to Titzla, in the State of Guerrero, but upon 
receiving warning that six cutthroats had been unleashed from 
the Mexico City jail to murder him, he removed to Chilpan- 
cingo. Here he was met by Juan Alverez, an old insurgent chief 
of 1810, who had already raised a force of several thousand peas- 
ants. Soon a series of peon uprisings occurred in the old revolu- 
tionary states of Michoacan, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, and 
Coahuila, against the hated usurper, and in favour of the ex- 
President. 

Unorganized and ill-equipped, the revolt had no chance of 
success. Indeed, the great land-owners, filled with blood lust 
against the man who had abolished slavery and loosened the 
bond of peonage, organized armed expeditions of their own 
against the insurgents. To these activities, rather than to the 
efforts of the government, was due the final suppression of the 
revolt and the destruction of Guerrero's followers. Guerrero 
now removed from Chilpancingo, and established his revolu- 
tionary headquarters at the seaport of Acapulco. It was here 
that the patriot fell a victim to a ruse of his arch-enemies, Busta- 
mante, Alaman, and the Minister of War, Facio. 

Lured on board a brig in the harbour by a certain Picaluga 
whom he regarded as a trusted friend, he was set upon by the 
crew, seized, bound, and taken to the port of Huatulco. Thence 
he was removed to Oaxaca, where, after a mock trial at the hand 
of the most reactionary members of the Army, he was sentenced 
to be shot as a traitor on the ridiculous charge of having con- 
spired with Minister Poinsett to sell Texas to the United States! 
On the 14th of February, 1831, the patriot Guerrero fell, like his 
noble comrades, Hidalgo and Morelos, before the firing platoons 
of the reactionaries. 

It has been charged against the administration of Guerrero 
that he endeavoured to rule in a democratic spirit a people ig- 
norant and inexperienced, and devoid of democratic training and 
traditions. The criticism is altogether illogical. Everything 
must have its beginning. How shall a nation acquire democra- 



86 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

tic training and tradition save by the exercise of democracy? 
Do we forbid the child to walk because at first it totters and falls ? 
Such criticisms as these have their foundation not in the facts of 
the case, but in self-interest. Guerrero tried nobly to found a 
democracy, but such a democracy was essentially inimical to 
the material interests of the ruling class. The people, in spite 
of their backward condition, were equal to the task, but Privi- 
lege was more powerful than they — and Privilege triumphed. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 

BY THE murder of Guerrero, the government calculated to 
quell the revolt of the people, sufficiently, at least, to enable it 
to prepare more thoroughgoing measures. The great struggle 
for Independence had planted deep in the hearts and minds of 
the peons the dream of democracy, of personal ownership of the 
land, and of freedom from oppressive taxation. The Church, 
out of her age-long experience as the arch-oppressor of the na- 
tions, well knew that these ideas, once aflame, could never be 
extinguished, and that presently the people would rise again 
with renewed might. 

At all costs, this stream of patriotic energy must be diverted. 
To continue to oppose it merely by the upkeep of an enormous 
standing army, voracious, and demoralized by inactivity, had 
already proved a cumbersome and unreliable method. There 
was but one expedient suitable for the situation — the oft tried 
and invariably successful one of inviting foreign invasion. Such 
an invasion must be, in this instance, a much more serious affair 
than the unsuccessful Spanish expedition. It must be sufficient 
not only to engage the activities of the army, but to arouse the 
entire nation to arms : above all, it must be sufficiently disastrous 
to insure the wholesale massacre of the more spirited peons, who, 
at the first alarm of national danger, would be foremost to re- 
linquish their insurgent activities and flock to the government 
standard. To bring about such a happy consummation was now 
the settled determination of the Clerical party. And her new 
appointees, President Bustamante, Minister of War Facio, and 

87 



88 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Minister of Interior and Foreign Relations Lucas Alaman, 
proved suitable tools for her purpose. 

The first step of the new regime was the complete suppression 
of the freedom of the press, followed immediately by the bitter 
persecution of the leading men of the Yorkino, or Popular party. 
"The shooting of Guerrero was a legal murder; but thereafter 
the new clerical administration wasted no time in the farcical 
processes of law. The governors and other officials of high posi- 
tion, suspected of popular sympathies, were summarily deposed : 
prominent citizens were exiled or executed, and the jails were 
filled with the political opponents of the administration, and 
with Liberal suspects denounced by paid spies." (Rivera, 
"Historia de Jalapa," p. 11.) 

"Puebla, Morelia, and Mexico were states which witnessed 
savage executions. Military courts, denunciations, dungeons, 
the insolence of the Army, and protected tyranny of the Clergy, 
were the characteristics of the Bustamante administration. It 
made of Congress an assemblage of lackeys, and spread the 
terror of the gallows over the whole country." (Gustavo Baz, 
" Vida de Juarez," p. 37.) 

The federal system proclaimed by the constitution of 1824, 
conservative as it was, had yet given a certain breathing space 
to Liberal aspirations. The next activity of the Clerical ad- 
ministration, therefore, was to destroy this federal system, and 
replace it by the central system of government. Under this 
latter, the autonomous, constitutional home government hither- 
to enjoyed by the state was subordinated to the authority of 
military chieftains with despotic powers. In this way the re- 
quirements of civil governments were rendered entirely subser- 
vient to the arbitrary demands of military force. A more 
despotic governmental machinery seldom has been devised. The 
public act of the people and the private act of the individual 
alike were subjected to the rigid examination of this military 
autocracy, and any merely suspected antagonism to the estab- 
lished order was savagely punished without process of law. 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 89 

The first clash of the impending struggle between the civil and 
military elements occurred in Guadalajara, in the State of Ja- 
lisco. A man named Brambila, having published a pamphlet 
criticising the military commander of the state, General Ignacio 
Inclan, was arrested by his orders, and summarily sen- 
tenced to be shot without civil trial. The governor of the state, 
a man of Liberal ideas, elected under the late federal system, 
peremptorily demanded the delivery of the prisoner to the civil 
authorities for just, and proper trial, according to established 
judicial procedure. Inclan curtly refused, and by way of pro- 
test the local legislature and state government left the city to- 
gether with the larger part of the population. Inclan, alarmed 
at the seriousness of the situation, and in spite of the support 
given him by the national government, delivered up his prisoner. 

From that moment the struggle recommenced with added 
bitterness. The times had changed. On the one hand the 
spread of the doctrines of the French Revolution and the long 
war of the people against Privilege had rendered them more 
class-conscious and more defiant in their attitude; on the other 
hand, the Church and Army in their efforts to maintain con- 
trol had grown more despotic and brutal than ever. The whole 
country was soon aroused to resistance, and the old revolution- 
ary states of the south and west — Jalisco, Zacatecas, Nuevo 
Leon, Coahuila and Texas, Tamaulipas, Sonora and Sinaloa 
— were already in open rebellion. 

The immediate object of this uprising of the people was 
the reestablishment of the federal system. This conservative 
and narrow demand on the part of an oppressed people consti- 
tutes a good example of a social phenomenon of common occur- 
rence, frequently misunderstood by sociologists. As according 
to the fundamental law, "action and reaction are equal and op- 
posite," which is as true — dialectically interpreted — for 
social dynamics as for physical dynamics, the extreme re- 
action of the privileged classes should have called forth, in this 
instance, an extreme counter-action on the part of the people. 



90 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

However, we find merely the demand for the federal system. 
But behind this moderate claim smouldered a spirit of fierce 
rebellion which presently was to sweep the military despotism 
of the central system from power, and in a few brief months 
reestablish, not merely the federal system, but a larger measure 
of liberty and constitutional government than Mexico had ever 
known — eloquent proof enough of the soundness of the law. 
In every struggle, the outpost must be taken first. The change 
of political systems was the immediate necessity of the move- 
ment, the requisite precondition of all future progress. 

It was on this, then, that the Revolution concentrated its 
attention for the moment. Social evolution furnishes many 
similar instances — e. g., the great movement of Scientific 
Socialism, in its advance among the nations, frequently is com- 
pelled to narrow its fundamental issue — the socialization of 
the means of wealth production — to such immediate measures 
as the procuring of an eight-hour law, or the establishment of 
the initiative, referendum, and recall. 

The states of Zacatecas and Guanajuato were foremost in the 
effective organization of the revolt. In the former state, a 
contingent of some three thousand armed civilians called 
"civicos,*'* was quickly mobilized, while in the latter the revo- 
lutionists had already routed the government forces. The 
radical decrees of Guerrero's administration had given immense 
impetus to the revolutionary agitation all over the country, 
and the work of the great patriot, too speedily underestimated 
by his enemies, was now beginning to bear fruit. 

"There was," says Navarro, in his "Historia de Mejico,'* 
"in Mexico at this time, a social body, numerous and ener- 
getic, who eagerly sought to place in the front of affairs those 



*The "civicos," who afterward played such an important part in the history 
of Mexico, were first created under the constitution of 1824, which established 
the federal system. Democratically constituted, electing their own officers, 
and consisting for the most part of the old insurgents, these armed civilian bodies 
performed the function of state guards, and afterward became the bulwark of 
civil institutions against the depredations of the regular army. 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 91 

who believed in the abolition of fueros, the confiscation of the 
estates of the Church, the dissolution of monasteries, and the 
suppression of the army.'' 

The fierce resistance offered to the establishment of the des- 
potic central system greatly embarrassed the plans of the Church 
and caused her to resort to an astonishing stratagem. It will be 
remembered that a certain General Santa Ana had wooed no- 
toriety under the empire by soliciting Iturbide for the honour 
of dissolving Congress by military force. A little later we saw 
this same fortune hunter heading the cuartelazo on behalf of 
the Church against Iturbide, and finally entering Mexico City 
as the "Liberator" after the rout of the Spanish expedition by 
the peasants of the coast. It was this man that the Church 
now employed to outwit and confound the revolutionists by 
starting a military revolt in favour of that same federal system 
whose establishment was the main object of the people's rev- 
olution! The stratagem was abundantly successful. Pressed 
hard by the regular army under Bustamante, nonplussed by 
the sudden accession of the powerful and popular Santa Ana 
to their cause, the insurgents abandoned the fight, and while 
waiting for the situation to resolve itself, threw all their strength 
into the impending presidential election. 

During the recent years of political struggle and armed con- 
flict between the people (represented by the Liberal party) 
and the Church, Army, and Aristocracy (represented by the 
Conservative party) , the former had gained a partial or com- 
plete control of most of the provincial legislatures. But if 
the latter had suffered a corresponding diminution of prestige 
among the people, they had by no means lost their economic 
power, at all times the dominant factor in the social process. 
The Conservatives now nominated Santa Ana for President. 
It was an appropriate selection. Not only had Santa Ana 
proved himself again and again the admirable and ingenious 
tool of reaction, but his reputation as the saviour of the country 
and the hero of the Republic, coupled with his recent spectacu- 



92 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

lar stand for federalism, practically insured his election in spite 
of the powerful opposition of the Liberals. 

The Liberal candidate was Dr. Valentine Gomez Farias. 
In opposition to the military masquerader, Santa Ana, Gomez 
Farias was the very type of the citizen Intellectual who be- 
lieves that society should be for the organized security and 
advantage of all, and not for the organized pillage of the mass 
by the few. According to the constitution of 1824, the state 
legislatures were empowered to elect both President and Vice- 
President. In the ensuing elections the Conservative party, 
representing the Church, Army, and Aristocracy, using every 
resource in their power, succeeded in placing their candidate, 
Santa Ana, at the head of the poll; while the Liberal party, with 
a very large minority, succeeded in electing Gomez Farias as 
Vice-President. In the national legislature elected by the 
people the Liberals had full control of both houses. Under such 
circumstances a terrific struggle was imminent. 

On April 1, 1833, the first Liberal Congress of Mexico opened 
its session, and Santa Ana and Gomez Farias assumed their 
respective oflaces. The Church at last had begun to realize the 
tremendous gains made by her adversaries. Completely over- 
powered in the lawful administration of government, she aban- 
doned the political field entirely, and turned with venomous 
energy to the plotting of another cuartelazo. Her purpose, 
however, lay deeper than the accomplishment of merely another 
coup d'Stat. The power of the people had become such that a 
mere military uprising waa foredoomed to failure, unless imme- 
diately supported by the diversion of the whole force of the 
nation from domestic reform to national defence. To the invi- 
tation of a foreign invasion to supplement her premeditated 
military uprising, the Church, therefore, turned her entire 
effort. 

Thus followed one of the most significant, but to those unini- 
tiated in the subtleties of the Church one of the most mystifying 
steps in the history of the Clerical policy in Mexico. Santa 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 93 

Ana, under instructions from the Church, asked Congress for 
leave of absence, placing his power temporally in the hands of 
the Liberal Vice-President, Gomez Farias ! 

To relinquish voluntarily to her enemies the last vestige of 
control in the government of the country at this particular mo- 
ment seems at first glance the work of sheer despair or insanity 
on the part of the Church. A little deeper insight, however, 
will show us that it merely indicated her supreme contempt for 
constitutional methods in class warfare, and her cynical confi- 
dence in her own intrigues. Of what use to retain Santa Ana as 
the impotent President of a government overwhelmingly Liberal 
when he could be employed to immense advantage in the work of 
organizing the intended cuartelazo? Of what use to take the 
present political situation too seriously when at the first alarm 
of the planned foreign invasion the power of the people and all 
its brave handiwork must be sunk in the struggle with the in- 
truder? 

The Liberals, whether conscious or not of the mines which 
the Church was sinking beneath them, took immediate and 
vigorous advantage of their power. The attack was opened by 
the legislature of the State of Mexico with the passage of a 
thoroughgoing revolutionary measure which struck directly 
at the roots of the existing social evils. Its main provisions 
were as follows : 

I. The estates in the province of Mexico that pertain to the 
support of the mission of the Holy Rosary in the Philippines, 
are hereby confiscated in favour of the said province of Mexico. 

II. The government shall divide the said estates into small 
farms, each one large enough to support a family, and shall 
cause these farms to be appraised by experts. 

III. The government shall sell these farms to the people at a 
price equivalent to 5 per cent, of their value, and the money thus 
received from the sale shall be used for the purpose of building 
roads and constructing irrigation works. 



94 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Following this law, another enactment was made, prohibiting 
the immigration of members of religious orders. In several 
other states of the country the local legislatures were adopting 
similar measures, while Vice-President Gomez Farias, at the 
head of the nation, was surrounding himself with progressive 
and capable citizens to the exclusion of the clergy and mili- 
tary. 

In the national Congress there now followed a torrent of legis- 
lation of such sanity and clear vision that one wonders what 
bright example Mexico might have set to the world had she not 
been halted in her splendid re-birth by the Texas war. 

The congressional decrees of the 19th and 24th of October, 
1833, established non-sectarian education throughout Mexico, 
and suppressed the privileges of the Church in the matter of 
opening schools and granting diplomas. Exasperated by this 
vital blow at her psychological control, the Church instigated a 
military uprising of the troops garrisoning Mexico City. Gomez 
Farias, however, with the aid of an armed body of civicos, 
promptly suppressed the revolt and disarmed the soldiers. Fol- 
lowing the suppression of this premature cuartelazo, laws were 
passed in rapid succession abolishing the yearly subsidy from 
the national treasury to the Church, abolishing the compulsory 
payment of tithings and taxes to the Church, and releasing the 
members of all religious orders from their vows. 

These terrible blows, levelled at the very heart of the material 
and moral power of the Church, were inflicted amidst the most 
dramatic surroundings. Cholera was raging throughout Mexico. 
In Mexico City alone two thousand bodies were buried in a 
single day. A black pall of mourning darkened the land, rent 
from border to border with the convulsive cries of victims and 
the lamentations of those bereft. The Church, cool and calculat- 
ing amid the national agony, quickly seized the opportunity to 
turn the sufferings of the people into political capital. Priestly 
processions paraded the streets, praying and wailing in a loud 
voice, and calling upon the people to repent, for God had sent 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 95 

this plague upon them to punish them for the iniquitous acts of 
the Liberal government. 

To the machinations of the Church, Congress answered by a 
decree appropriating the estates of the missions of upper and 
lower California to the use of the government. The same de- 
cree was also applied to the other estates of the mission of the 
Holy Rosary in the Philippines, thus completing on a national 
scale the expropriation initiated locally by the legislature of 
Mexico state. This marked the climax of the people's brief but 
fecund reign of power. One step more, and the Mexican nation 
would have achieved democracy. 

Congress had already intimated its intention of confiscating 
the entire property of the Church and applying it to the use of 
the people. It now proceeded to aim the deathblow at the su- 
premacy of Privilege by decreeing the suppression of the Army, 
and creating in its stead a permanent bulwark to the liberties of 
the people by the organization of bodies of civicos — free citi- 
zen militia — with the right of electing their own officers. 

The moment for the decisive grapple had come. The Church 
was fully prepared, and in a flash the long premeditated cuartel- 
azo burst forth. In the State of Mexico a certain Colonel Unda 
headed a military uprising, calling upon Santa Ana to seize the 
dictatorship. The moment was not yet ripe for the President 
to show his hand. With admirable aplomb he appeared to be 
much enraged, and gathering all the available troops in Mexico 
City marched against the rebels. When, however, he seemed 
about to engage Unda, his troops revolted, arrested him, and 
joined the rebels ! Needless to remark, the arrest and defection 
were only parts of a clever scheme arranged by Santa Ana him- 
self. A few days later he returned to Mexico City, having suc- 
cessfully escaped from his self-imposed imprisonment. 

The first part of the plan had been accomphshed, Mexico 
City was defenceless, and her garrison with the rebel forces. 
The cuartelazo now became general throughout the country. 
In the south, Nicolas Bravo headed his troops in rebellion 



96 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

against the Liberal administration, calling upon Santa Ana to 
assume the dictatorship, and declaring that he and all his men 
were prepared to die as martyrs in the defence of the Christian 
faith and the freedom of the fatherland. In the State of 
Michoacan the garrison, under the command of Ignacio Esca- 
lado, followed suit with a similar uprising and proclamation. 
From all parts of the country came tidings of revolt. 

The psychological moment had arrived for Santa Ana to 
declare himself. His leave of absence had expired and he was 
already due at the capital to resume his duties as President. 
Suddenly he appeared in Mexico City, not, however, as the law- 
ful executive of the country, but at the head of the rebellious 
troops, proclaiming the abolition of the federal system and the 
restitution of the central system. Before the Liberal party 
could prepare a defence, he had dissolved Congress by military 
force, and had promulgated a decree repealing all its recent 
enactments against the privileges and power of Church and 
Army. 

With one foul blow the great constructive work of the people 
had been destroyed. Although demoralized for the moment, 
by the swiftness of the onslaught, the Liberals, backed by the 
overwhelming power of the people, undoubtedly would have 
swept the cuartelazo, and with it, both Church and Army, 
from Mexico forever. But scarcely had they gathered them- 
selves for the fight, scarcely had the eager multitudes through- 
out the land unstacked their rifles for the reconquest of 
democracy, when out of the north, as scheduled by the Church, 
came the cry of international war. 

In the face of national danger the revolt died at birth. 
Reaction was triumphant. The rifle loaded for the heart of 
Privilege, in defence of the freedom of the people, was now hur- 
riedly turned against the foreign enemy — an unwilling enemy, 
goaded into attack only by the persistent barbs of the 
Church. 

The rebellion of the American colonists in Texas, fomented 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 97 

by every device known to intrigue, had come to snatch from the 
people the fruits of their victory. 

With the arbitrary dissolution of Congress, Santa Ana had 
caused the no less arbitrary deposition of Gomez Farias. Not 
content with his deposition, Santa Ana ordered him out of 
the country on pain of death. It is interesting to note in this 
respect the comment of La Lima de Vulcano, the inspired organ 
of the ruling class, in its issue of September 9, 1835 : "Yesterday 
the hated Gomez at last left this capital under the most justi- 
fied condemnation of the whole country. He has brought upon 
the nation cholera and poverty, immorality and tyranny, spy- 
ing and treason, ignorance and sacrilege, the uplifting of crime, 
and the repression of honesty, the victory of the low and vulgar 
people, and the casting down of the select, terror, and mourning 
families' proscription, tears and death, in a thousand horrible 
ways." In direct opposition to this let us quote from Ban- 
croft's "History of Mexico," Vol. 15, p. 127: "Gomez Farias 
left the executive office without a stain on his character." 

The Clerical party was now busy throughout the length and 
breadth of Mexico celebrating the accession of Santa Ana to 
power, and endeavouring to arouse a spirit of enthusiasm among 
the people on his behalf. Some glimpse of the means employed 
for this purpose can be gained from the following manifesto, 
issued by the Archbishop of Mexico City and Canon of the Holy 
Metropolitan Church: 

A thousand times blessed is the man [Santa Ana] who, with his firm hand, 
has returned to God His legitimate heritage. His memory will be eternally 
blessed to the end of the centuries, and his crown of glory will shine in heaven 
for all eternity. His name will be remembered with gratitude by generations 
to come, and the prayers of old and young, of virgins and children, will go up to 
him as the elected son of God. His victorious sword has come to the protection 
of religion and, through his true Catholicism, we have regained the peace, liberty 
and everlasting power of our Church. . . . We were in fear that God's 
mercy was denied to us, but God himself, looking upon us in kindness, compas- 
sionated our sufferings. At the end of last April He caused to appear on our 
national horizon a shining star whose beauty, gleaming in splendour, announced 
as in the ancient days of the Wise Men, that justice and peace were about to 
descend upon our land. This was the coming to this capital of our beloved. 
His Excellency the President, Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, to take once 



98 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

again in his hands the command of our republic. In him, our deepest religious 
and patriotic feelings will eternally recognize the glorious hero who deserves the 
love and gratitude of our nation. 

It is significant of the depths to which the Church had fallen 
that she no longer proudly dictated her will but must needs 
fawn upon an intriguer, beg from a charlatan, and bribe a 
scoundrel, in order to maintain her hold on the wealth of the 
nation. 

Forty thousand dollars a month was the bribe which the 
Church offered Santa Ana for his services, a bribe which he was 
cynical enough publicly to accept. His Minister of Justice an- 
nounced in the oflBcial organ: "His Excellency the President, 
according to the wishes of several ecclesiastical bodies, has ac- 
cepted from them the donation of $40,000 a month for the next 
six months for his expenses." ("Mexico a traves de los Siglos," 
Vol. 4, p. 342.) This was the "thirty pieces of silver" paid by 
the Church as the price of her salvation, and the betrayal of the 
nation. Never before in the history of the Church in Mexico 
had she opened the money bag with such prodigality, and never 
before according to her own records and documents had she 
greater need. 

Santa Ana having dismissed the Liberal Congress, President, 
and cabinet, appointed as his premier the Bishop of Michoacan, 
Juan Cayetano Portugal. Meanwhile the Texas revolt suc- 
cessfully held the attention of the people from the consideration 
of domestic reforms. For them the affair was not merely a 
local uprising against the national authority, but a war with the 
United States, dangerous in the extreme, to Mexican integrity. 
The Church had accurately calculated the effect of her plot, 
and so eager had she been to thwart the intended uprising of the 
Liberals against the cuartelazo that she had announced the 
armed revolt of the American colonists in Texas two months before 
it broTce out* 

When the news had spread throughout the country, the armed 

*Bulnes, "Las Grandes Mentiras de Nuestra Historia," p..354. 



THE PRESIDENCY OF BUSTAMANTE 99 

bodies of civicos. organi^ed ^y<^!>^l^^-^::^:::^ ^ 
Zaeatecas, Guadalajara San Lu.sPoto^ ^^^^^^^ 

parts of the country, -^^.^'^^^^Xun™ wof tL thr 
found themselves compelled to desist m view 

national danger. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE TEXAS WAR 

I. THE INTRIGUES OF THE CHURCH IN MEXICO 

IN CONSIDERING the war with Texas it will be necessary 
to bear in mind several important basic facts : 

I. The Church in Mexico wanted war. A war with some 
foreign country was at this time absolutely necessary to the rul- 
ing class in Mexico for the preservation of its powers. 

II. The Southern States of the United States wanted war. 
A war with some foreign country was at this time beginning to be 
highly desirable for the ruling class in the Southern States, for 
the diversion of national attention from the conflicting issues of 
the North and South, and for the preservation of the planting 
interests in Congress. 

III. The Southern States wanted Texas for political, not 
territorial, reasons. In view of the rapid development of the 
industrial North, the feudal South recognized that unless it 
could strengthen its numerical representation in the Senate by 
the acquisition of additional slave-holding territory, such as 
Texas, it would soon lose its economic and political dominance 
in the country. 

IV. The Texans were loyal to Mexico. The Texan colon- 
ists were heartily opposed to secession from Mexico, and not 
until the last moment, when harried to desperation by bands of 
hired American outlaws and bodies of Mexican regulars, did they 
take any hand in the matter themselves. 

100 



THE TEXAS WAR 101 

V. A tacit understanding existed between Andrew Jackson 
and Santa Ana. Although thousands of lives were sacrificed, 
and a legacy of race-hatred bequeathed to the contending peoples 
which endures to the present day, never at any time was the 
conflict viewed seriously by either of the ruling classes, American 
or Mexican, who invoked it; never at any time did Lucas Ala- 
man, the Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations, and Santa 
Ana, the Mexican President and commander-in-chief of the 
Army (both of them mere creatures of the Church), act in con- 
flict with the desires of Andrew Jackson and his Cabinet in 
Washington. 

VI. The interests of the Church in Mexico and of the South- 
ern planters were identical. The interests of the two contending 
parties were identical: the one robbed to preserve its internal 
supremacy, the other consenting to be robbed for a like reason. 
Only the peaceful and industrious Texan colonists, the volun- 
teers and hired gunmen of the United States, and the deluded 
Mexican soldiers, were the immediate sufferers in the conflict. 

VII. Religious fanaticism was used by both parties to fan 
the conflict. Texas was one of the most ardent supporters of the 
federal system in Mexico, although perfectly willing to accept 
the central system for the sake of peace and it was at least half 
Protestant in faith. The Church in Mexico, therefore, obtained 
an additional zest from its torture, and utilized the cry of 
"heretic" to make of the affair a "holy war." On the other 
hand, the Protestant fanaticism of the United States was readily 
utilized by the paid agents of the South to inflame the North 
into cooperation in the war which could boast for its ostensible 
purpose the deliverance of Protestant American colonists from 
the persecution of Rome. 

Bearing these seven basic facts in mind, the seeming wanton- 
ness of the Texas tangle ceases to embarrass the mind, and the 
affair resolves itself into a simple and classic illustration of well- 
accepted principles in class rule. 



102 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

In the year 1819, while Mexico was still under the colonial 
regime, Moses Austin, a sturdy pioneer from Connecticut, sought 
permission of the governor of Northern Mexico to establish 
a colony of three hundred families in Texas. The Virrey at 
that time, Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, to whom the request was 
referred, readily gave the desired permission, and authorized 
the military commander of that region to choose a location for 
the settlement of the colony, on the right bank of the Brazos 
River, ninety miles from the Gulf of Mexico, The concession 
stipulated that the colonists be natives of Louisiana, Catholics 
of approved behaviour and morality, and that on taking posses- 
sion of their land they swear allegiance and obedience to the 
Spanish Government. In April, 1822, Austin visited Mexico 
City, and remained there a year, arranging the final terms of the 
concession with the government, now no longer Spanish, but 
Mexican. In the course of these negotiations he not only ob- 
tained liberal modifications of the original conditions, but was 
honoured with the brevet of colonel of the Mexican Army, and 
accorded full powers to use his discretion for the welfare of the 
colonists. In the following year the colonists, under his direc- 
tion, took definite possession of the land allotted them by the 
government. 

Later in the year, when the new constitution established the 
federal system, the Texan colonists entered the federal family 
under the official designation of the "State of Coahuila and 
Texas." Under this new constitution, which gave autonomy 
to the provinces, the local government had power to make such 
land concessions as it deemed fit; and Moses Austin made good 
use of the opportunity to establish hundreds of new settlers on 
the land. The Liberal administration no longer upheld the 
conditions requiring the profession of the Catholic faith on the 
part of the colonists, and in consequence, many of the new set- 
tlers were Protestants. Under the tolerant national and local 
regime of the time the devotees of both religions worked side by 
side in perfect amity, and there is no record of any serious fric- 



THE TEXAS WAR 103 

tion between them, in spite of the insincere accusations of per- 
secution flung back and forth during the so-called Texas War, 
between the Mexican clerical intriguers on the one side, and the 
Southern Protestant intriguers on the other. 

The fertility of the land thus freely given, the seven years 
of exemption from taxation which the new settlers enjoyed, 
and the rising prosperity of the colony, attracted a steady 
stream of immigration into Texas, and by the year 1826 the west- 
ern side of the Brazos and Colorado rivers, as far as the Nac- 
ogdoches River, was fairly well populated. Not only was there 
a friendly feeling manifested between the Catholic and Prot- 
estant settlers, but also between the Mexican residents and this 
incoming tide of new population. Amid the general prosperity 
mutual good feeling was general, while the government of the 
state gave every facility for the welfare of all. Thus the colony 
would have become a strong, harmonious, and richly productive 
society — a new state in the Mexican federal family — had it 
not been for the hands which were laid upon her to save the 
supremacy of the Mexican Church and a slave-holding aristoc- 
racy. 

Under the federal system, established by the constitution 
of 1824, the new colony shared in the privileges of autonomous 
government granted to all the states of the Republic. Of 
inestimable service to the prosperity of the country, this federal 
system proved highly inconvenient to the Church. For her 
it meant that the struggle for supremacy in the affairs of the 
nation must be carried on in thousands of different and widely 
sundered seats of war instead of in Mexico City alone, thus en- 
tailing the entire readjustment of her own essentially central 
and hierarchical organization. For this reason the Church 
bitterly fought the introduction of the federal system, and in 
the conflict which ensued between the Clerical and Liberal 
powers the colonists took their full share. 

As we have seen, when Bustamante seized the control of 
government from the hands of President Guerrero, he at once 



104 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

obeyed the dictates of the Church and estabhshed the central 
system. He knew well enough, even as his Minister Alaman 
knew, that the people would never surrender to such a disas- 
trous change without a bitter struggle. There was but one 
possible method of averting the coming conflict — to embroil 
the nation in a foreign war. It was to this well-worn expedient, 
then, that the Clerical party, represented by Bustamante and 
Alaman, turned. In this connection the brilliant writer of 
*'Las Grandes Mentiras de Nuestra Historia" — Francisco 
Bulnes — says, p. 757: "For the government of Bustamante, as 
for any government established by the cuartelazo, foreign war 
was the only possible method of avoiding civil war; for, in the 
face of national peril, patriotism unites aU factions under its 
flag." 

The plot, which made the unwitting colonists the victims of 
political intrigue, had begun to assume shape when Busta- 
mante, immediately after his accession to power, abolished the 
federal system in Texas, and established the central system, 
accompanied by brutal military rule. Says Doctor Mora, a 
Mexican historian of recognized worth, in speaking of this phase 
of the situation, in his work, "Mexico y sus Revoluciones," 
(Vol. 1, p. 414): "The new military commanderies in Texas 
were a fruitful source of trouble and disorder. The determina- 
tion of the military class to overawe the civil government, and 
the disrespect of the soldiery for the lawful authorities, consti- 
tuted a ready weapon for the throttling of civil liberty and the 
shedding of citizen blood." 

The military class, when charged with despotic power, were, 
at their best, well calculated to irritate the most peaceable 
community into revolt; what they were at their worst, when 
tacitly prompted and supported in their acts of outrage by the 
supreme authority of the nation, can well be imagined. 

"The natural animosity of the peace-loving colonists toward 
their turbulent soldiery was further intensified by the hideous 
crimes of some of the officers of the arjny stationed in the colony, 



THE TEXAS WAIt 105 

which were allowed to pass quite unpunished." (Bias Filisola, 
"Guerra de Texas," Vol. 2, p. 86.) 

Stephen Austin, a man who exercised a great and beneficent 
influence among the colonists, and who opposed the independ- 
ence of Texas to the last moment, wrote, in a letter addressed 
to General Mier y Teran: "I have informed you many times, 
and I inform you again, that it is impossible to rule Texas by a 
military system. I am convinced that the more the army is 
increased in Texas the greater will become the danger to the 
country's peace and tranquillity. . . . From the year 1821 
I have maintained order and enforced the law in my colony 
simply by means of civicos, without a single soldier, and with- 
out a dollar of expense to the nation. . . . The situation 
of the colonists is a very delicate and unhappy one, and I trust 
you will not be offended with the frankness and clarity with 
which I express myself in regard to military power. Upon this 
subject of military despotism I have never hesitated to express 
my opinion, for I consider it the source of all revolutions, and 
of the slavery and ruin of free peoples. I firmly believe that 
until the reduction of military authority and the abatement of 
military privilege is accomplished, no peace, stability, or pro- 
gress can be expected in Mexico. This, and the establishment 
of religious liberty, are the two remedies most sorely needed, and 
the man who will bring them to pass will deserve the honest 
name of * Washington of Mexico.' " 

One can readily imagine what a bad effect this noble letter 
had on the clerico-miHtary intriguers who had decreed the 
revolt of Texas. 

The fact that more than half of the colonists were Protestant 
Americans, and that the Protestant faith was beginning to gain 
ground even among the Mexicans, furnished the Church with 
yet another weapon for provoking the required strife. Pro- 
claiming a "holy war" against "the dissolute and sacrilegious 
enemies of God in Texas," the priests used every artifice in their 
power to arouse the prejudice and passion of the Mexican people 



106 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

against the colonists, calling upon them as the modern Israelites, 
and Chosen People of God, to go forth and destroy the Philistines 
of the north. In all of these harangues the priests were careful 
to confound the Texan colonists with the whole American nation 
in order to give to the local friction the significance of an inter- 
national war. 

As a matter of history the United States as a whole was 
profoundly ignorant of the wretched imbroglio, and only the 
Democratic clique immediately surrounding Andrew Jackson 
exhibited any sign of active interest in it. 

In order to keep the exasperation of the colonists at fever 
heat, President Bustamante had dispatched General Mier y 
Teran to Texas with instructions to suppress all trace of civil 
government. Teran executed his orders with zeal, and not only 
suppressed the civil courts and trial by jury established by the 
colonists, but even declared null and void all contracts and land 
concessions made by the federal government prior to April, 1830, 
thus violently depriving the more recent colonists of the farms 
and homes which they had established in perfect good faith. 

Not content with these measures, Teran permitted a tricky 
politician, named Francisco Madero, who had accompanied 
him from Mexico, to set himself up as a distributor of land con- 
cessions under the supposed authority of the central government ; 
and many of these land concessions included the cancelled con- 
cessions already homesteaded. In addition to this, on the 6th 
of April, 1830, the national Congress of Mexico passed a measure 
prohibiting the further colonization of Texas by American immi- 
grants; and General Teran, in enforcing the law, interpreted it 
in such fashion as to deny the right of any man of Anglo-Saxon 
extraction to hold Texan land concessions, giving to this unwar- 
ranted and mischievous interpretation a retroactive effect against 
the land concessions already recognized by the law. If history 
bore no further evidence to prove that the revolt of Texas was 
deliberately invoked by the Clerical party in Mexico, this utterly 
brutal and inane assault on the legitimate possessions and ele- 



THE TEXAS WAR 107 

mentary rights of the colonists would alone amply prove the 
'contention. 

From the moment General Teran set foot in Texas the country 
was given over to the lawless ruffianism of the Mexican military. 
" Colonel Nicolas Condelle entered upon his duties in Coliad by 
holding up the Mayor of the town at the point of the gun, and 
forcing him to deliver up the funds of the municipal treasury 
to the amount of five thousand dollars. He then proceeded 
forcibly to disarm the citizens of the district of Be jar, who more 
than any other of these colonists were open to the attacks of the 
Indians. In addition to these measures, he impressed the best 
of the citizens into the army, and finally compelled every family 
to support five soldiers." (Yoakum, "History of Texas," Vol. 
2, p. 13.) It would be tiresome to detail the innumerable out- 
rages practised against the colonists by the military command- 
ers with a view to driving them to revolt, but mention should 
be made of a particularly goading measure which forbade Anglo- 
Saxon colonists to engage in retail trade, under the pretext that 
this was the prerogative of native-born Mexicans — this, in 
spite of the fact that by the original decree which gave them 
their land concessions, the colonists had become fully enfran- 
chised Mexican citizens. 

In the month of April, 1835, President Santa Ana was prepar- 
ing to strike the final blow at the revolutionary movement of the 
Liberals under Gomez Farias, and it is a matter of the highest 
significance that at this time "it was announced in the lobbies 
and government offices of Mexico City, in the cafes and places 
of fashionable resort, that in the year 1836 an expedition would 
be dispatched against the Texan colonists, not merely to enforce 
their obedience to the law, but to punish them severely with 
extermination or expulsion." (Bias Filisola, " Guerra de Texas," 
Vol. 2, p. 137, 138.) At the time when this sanguinary threat of 
extermination was already openly uttered in Mexican clerical 
and military circles the Texan colonists were not in revolt at all. 
it is true that in the general Liberal uprising against Bustamante 



108 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

in 1832, which abolished the central system and established the 
federal system, the Texans had naturally taken part at the invi- 
tation of the other states of the federation, but since that time 
they had remained peacefully loyal to the government. The 
colony, indeed, now numbering 21,000 souls, had good reasons 
to be contented, for it was probably the most prosperous and best 
organized society in Mexico. 

On the 31st of August, 1835 (a matter of forty-one days before 
the first actual uprising in the colony), a circular, couched in the 
following terms, was addressed to all governors and municipal 
authorities at the instigation of the Church: "The colonists 
established in Mexico have shown unequivocally to what ex- 
tremes they are prepared to go in their perfidy, ingratitude, and 
treachery. Forgetting their duty to the Supreme Government 
and to the nation which had so generously given them a place 
in her bosom, with fertile lands for cultivation, and all the 
natural resources necessary for their bountiful living, they have 
revolted against this nation under the pretext of sustaining a 
system, a change in which has been desired by the majority of 
Mexicans; in this way hoping to hide their criminal ambitions to 
dismember the Republic." (Collection de Leyes Decretos y 
Circulares. DublanyMaza tomo que comprende los anos de 
1835 a 1840.) 

The efifect of this circular distributed broadcast throughout 
the country, coupled with the persistent agitation set up by the 
pulpit and press, was successful in arousing the deluded people 
of Mexico to the desired war fever, and in causing them to lay 
aside for the time all effort to remedy their own bitter wrongs. 
Thus was the Church again triumphant. In spite of all this 
deliberate antagonism, however, the great bulk of the colonists 
still remained loyal to the government. This large loyal faction 
was divided into two wings, the one loyal to the government, 
but opposed to Centralism; the other, loyal to the government 
unconditionally. Indeed, so closely were the economic interests 
of the colonists bound up with the economic interests of Mexico 



THE TEXAS WAR 109 

that even at a later day, when the exasperating actions of the 
government had passed all bounds to which honourable men may 
submit, they still remained fatuously and stubbornly loyal, 
hoping that the great Liberal party, at whose hand they had re- 
ceived so large a measure of autonomy and civil liberty, would 
again come into power and reestablish the federal system. 

The population of Texas as a whole at this time was divided 
into three parties : The Annexationist, the Independent, and 
the Mexican. The Annexationist party comprised only a weak 
and uninfluential group organized by the paid agents and politi- 
cal adventurers maintained in Texas by Andrew Jackson, then 
the President of the United States.* The Independent party, 
another comparatively weak and uninfluential minority, wished 
to erect Texas into a separate independent republic. They 
were strongly opposed to the policy of the Annexationists, for 
they clearly discerned that annexation to the United States 
meant annexation to the already jeopardized slave-holding 
interest of the South. The Mexican party, on the contrary, 
which included in its ranks the great majority of the wealthier 
and better educated colonists, and of course the Mexican resi- 
dents, upheld the policy of loyalty to Mexico at any price. It 
opposed annexation for the same reason that the Independent 
party opposed it, and it opposed Independence on the just 
grounds that it would prove a very costly matter for so small a 
population as Texas then held to maintain a separate system of 
governmental machinery as well as the large standing army 
which her exposed position would render imperative. 

The Mexican party was loyal to Mexico, because in this loy- 
alty they divined the best warranties for their peace and pros- 
perity. It is true that the prohibitive tariff erected against 
them by the centralist government would have given them 
economic reason for relaxing their adherence to Mexico had the 
tariff ever actually taken effect. In reality, however, it worked 



*For a somewliat favourable view of Jackson's intrigues to get possession of 
Texas, see Rives' "The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848." 



no THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

no hardship upon them at all; for the Mexican customs service 
was quite inadequate to the task of patrolling such an enormous 
extent of border, even if it had not been readily bribed a.nd cor- 
rupted into cooperation with the contraband trade. 

Again, in the matter of chattel slavery, the interest of the 
colonists was clearly best subserved by loyalty to Mexico. Quite 
a large number of the wealthier colonists were slave-holders, and 
although by the decree of President Guerrero slavery had been 
abolished in Mexico, the decree had never been enforced as far 
as Texas was concerned. The central government which had 
superseded Guerrero had continued to overlook breach of the law 
in this respect, and the Texan slave-holders had come to consider 
the matter as practically settled in their favour. Indeed, even 
had the central government taken cognizance of their disobedi- 
ence to the abolitionary decree, they had good precedent for 
expecting rich indemnity in the shape of land grants for their 
confiscated slaves. On the other hand, they foresaw the rapidly 
approaching doom of slavery under American rule. Thus 
every dictate of their material interest cried aloud to them to 
remain loyal to Mexico and hope for the best. 

" I say it again, "says Bulnes, *' the great majority of the Texas 
colonists were willing to accept Mexican rule, even the hated 
Centralism, so long as it was unaccompanied by military ruffian- 
ism." (Francisco Bulnes, "Las Grandes Mentiras de Nuestra 
Historia,"p.361.) 

Similarly, says the American historian: "This Peace party 
which had so much to lose by any change in the political status 
quo, in fear lest the intolerable insults and prsetorianism of the 
soldiery under General Teran might exasperate the less politic 
of the colonists into open retaliation, issued an energetic appeal 
to the people, lamenting that the interest of the great majority 
who stood for peace was being threatened by the temerity of the 
few, rebuking the disquieting attitude of the agitators and call- 
ing attention to the recent circular issued by General Cos and 
the jefe politico of Bejar, which contained full assurance on the 



THE TEXAS WAR 111 

part of the Mexican authorities that the poUtical and civil rights 
of the colonists would not be injured. This peace manifesto 
went on to affirm that there could be no reasonable doubt but 
that the Supreme Government would listen with the utmost 
good-will to the appeals of the colonists, and that it would un- 
doubtedly do whatever lay in its power to promote the progress 
and welfare of all the citizens in the Republic. It further ex- 
pressed the firm determination of the Peace party to promote 
by all honourable means the union of the colony with Mexico, 
and due obedience to Mexican law on the part of the colonists, 
and to sternly reprove any acts or attitudes which could involve 
conflict withthecentral government. In conclusion it announced 
that the Peace party were ready to sustain the government 
in enforcing the law, in the hope that its present objectionable 
features might be presently eliminated; that they regarded the 
efforts now being made to destroy the harmony between Texas 
and the rest of the Republic with profound disapproval; and 
that they called upon all friends of order to support the present 
authorities, not only because it was to their material interest 
to do so, but because inviolable obligations, moral and legal, 
prompted them to sustain the government with their property, 
honour, and lives." (Conclin, "A New History of Texas," p. 
147.) 

Julian Travis, who afterward played a conspicuous part in the 
Texan Revolution, a man of admirable qualities and gallant 
courage, as he proved in the battle of the Alamo, in writing to a 
friend about the condition of the colonists at this time, said: 
"The truth is the people are much divided here; the Peace party, 
as they style themselves, I believe are the strongest, and make 
much the most noise. Unless we could be united had we not 
better be quiet and settle down for a while? There is no doubt 
but that a central government will be established. What will 
Texas do in that case.f^ Dr. J. H. C. Miller, and Chambers, of 
Gonzalez, are, I believe, for unqualified submission. I do not 
know the minds of the people upon the subject; but if they had 



in THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

a bold and determined leader I am inclined to think they would 
kick against it. General Cos writes me that he wants to be at 
peace with us; Ugartechea does the same. God knows what we 
are to do ! I, for one, am determined to go with my country- 
men; right or wrong, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, 
I am with them." (Yoakum, "History of Texas,*' Vol. 1., p. 
343.) And Travis was no enemy of Mexico, but simply a man 
of large heart, willing to share the fortunes of his people for good 
or ill. 

We trust we have conclusively proved to the reader the first 
half of our contention : that the Texas revolt was not the spon- 
taneous work of the colonists themselves, but the result of the 
deliberate machinations of the Clerical party in Mexico. We 
now hope to throw some light on the other half of our contention: 
that Andrew Jackson and the planting interests of the South were 
equally guilty with the Mexican Clerical party of inciting the 
colonists to revolt. 

II. INTRIGUES OF ANDREW JACKSON AND THE PLANTING 
INTERESTS 

In the year 1830 America was divided into two well-marked 
and antagonistic factions — the free, industrial, and rapidly 
developing North, the slave-holding, agricultural, and stagnant 
South. The psychology and material interests of the North 
were those pertaining to a society in process of rapid transition 
from agrarian and industrial quasi-democracy to fully developed 
capitalism, with its monopoly of Privilege on the one hand, and 
wage-slavery on the other. The psychology and material inter- 
ests of the South, on the contrary, were those pertaining to a 
society in a state of arrested feudal development. In 1830 the 
Democrats of the South were the dominant economic and politi- 
cal factor in the United States; but they already foresaw the day 
rapidly approaching when their supremacy would pass irrevo- 
cably to the North. To avert such a catastrophe they were 



THE TEXAS WAR 113 

ready to go to any extreme. Foreign war, secession, or the 
acquisition of additional slave-holding territory, were the only 
possible alternatives before them. 

Texas was already largely American and Southern in person- 
nel. Slavery was one of its established institutions. Its terri- 
tory when divided properly would be sufficient to return no lesg 
than eighteen additional Democratic Senators to Washington. 
Was it not then eminently fitting that Texas should be wrenched 
away from Mexico and added to the South? Andrew Jackson 
thought so, and the whole planting interests of the South thought 
so. A willing partner at the chess-board appeared in the Cleri- 
cal party of Mexico, desperately bayed by the rising Liberals. 
It was a case of now or never with the South, as with the Church; 
and the Texan embroglio began. 

When Andrew Jackson had come into power as successor to 
John Quincy Adams it had been with the understanding that he 
was to use all the powers of government to protect the planting 
interests who were responsible for his election. The South had 
judged its man rightly. A slave-holder himself, unscrupulous, 
determined, and with pronounced dictatorial proclivities, Jack- 
son, more than any other president of the United States, suc- 
ceeded in imposing his will on the American people. His own 
interests were at stake, as well as the interests of the faction he 
represented. He gathered about him a cabinet agreeable to 
his purpose, and determined never to rest until Texas had been 
added to the South. His first act in power was to instruct 
American Minister Poinsett at Mexico City to open negotiations 
at once for the acquisition of Texas at a cash price of $5,000,000 ! 
Needless to say, the Liberals who were at that time in power in 
Mexico wasted little discussion on such a proposal. 

A little later Poinsett was succeeded at the Mexican legation 
by Butler — a close friend of Andrew Jackson, and a slave- 
holder^ Shortly after his arrival in Mexico City in 1829 Butler 

*The citizen of the United States who is surprised at the low character of the 
diplomatic representatives of his country in Mexico, and the depths of intrigue 
to which they descended, will do well to read the great work by their fellow coun- 



114 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

wrote to Jackson the following illuminating note: "I have not 
lost sight for one moment of the Texas question in which you 
have such a great interest, not only because I know your wishes 
about it, but because I know the great advantage to our country 
to obtain it. But the public opinion of this country is so strongly 
opposed to the acquisition of Texas by the United States that 
I believe the Government will never be willing to entertain a 
proposition in this respect, and much less the cession of Texas. 
Any time that the press try to arouse the fire of the opposition 
against President Guerrero, articles appear in the papers charg- 
ing him with being willing to sell Texas to us, and that for this 
one crime alone he deserves to be thrown out of office." {Revue 
des Deux Mondes, 15 July, 1844, p. 239.) 

When Jackson recognized that the Mexican Liberal govern- 
ment was not to be bought into the cession of Texas he changed 
his tactics; and by making known the failure of his overtures 
turned the attention of the South toward more drastic measures. 

In the beginning of 1830 the Arkansas Gazette published an 
inspired editorial opening with these words: "According to 
information received from a source entitled to the highest credit, it 
appears that we are not to have any more hopes of the acquisi- 
tion of Texas while there is not in Mexico a party more friendly 
to the United States." ("Biblioteca Nacional," Direction, Vol. 
17, Primera Serie de Documentos de la Historia de Mexico.) 

Henceforward Jackson abandoned his intrigues for the acquisi- 
tion of Texas by diplomatic methods, and bent all his energies 



tryman, Mr. G. L. Rives, "The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848," Vol. I. 
On page 236 this author, writing of Butler as a " diplomatic " representative, says : 
"Some of Butler's correspondence is insolent and even scurrilous in tone; and 
all of it betrays the author as vain, ignorant, ill-tempered and corrupt." Rives 
states that Butler was a speculator in Texas lands, that Jackson knew it and 
became interested in his schemes to get Texas for the United States, that shortly 
after Butler began negotiations with Jackson, the latter declared the time had 
come to acquire, or to attempt to acquire, Texas, that Butler was ready to resort 
to bribery and violence in Mexico while there as a "diplomat," that, although 
Jackson apparently objected to express bribery, he was willing to approve it in 
veiled form (Rives, Vol. I, p. 258), and that after Butler was proved to be 
a scoundrel Jackson stood by him (p. 258). 



THE TEXAS WAR 115 

toward inciting the colony to revolt. To this end he dispatched 
to the scene of operations his friend, Sam Houston.* Houston 
had been governor of the State of Tennessee, a representative to 
Congress from the same state, and having taken a very active 
part in Jackson's election, he seemed destined to a high and 
remunerative position in the Government. It was a great sur- 
prise, therefore, to the uninitiated when this favourite of fortune 
suddenly left the unsickled harvest at Washington to, come to 
Texas, where he had neither agricultural, financial, nor political 
interests. The surprise, however, changed to a deep under- 
standing when he announced upon his arrival that he had com© 
to Texas commissioned by President Jackson to arouse the 
colony in revolt and annex it to the United States. The Journal 
de la Louidane, in speaking of Houston's departure for Texas^ 
announced with a cynical frankness which showed how completely 
the President's psychology dominated the press of the time: 
"He has gone to Texas to start a revolution in favour of its in- 
dependence with the purpose of annexing it to the United States. 
We may expect shortly to hear of his raising his flag." (Ibid.) 

To obtain the tacit sanction of the American people to this 
intrigue required some diplomacy and genuine effort, for the 
spirit of the Independence still lived among them, and not know- 
ingly would they have lent it their countenance. The South, of 
course, was solid for the acquisition of Texas, by fair means or 
foul; New England, having no interests to be served in the 
matter, was largely antagonistic, but many parts of the North 
were under the imperialistic glamour created by the Slavocracy. 
To create the right atmosphere for the projected plot, there was 



*Mr. Rives states that Houston was "known to the Indians as the Wanderer 
or Big Drunk, or Drunken Sam," and was at the time of his "diplomatic mis- 
sion" to Texas described by a contemporary as "very much of a broken down 
sot and debauchee." ("The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848/' Vol. I, pp. 
292, 293.) A Mexican may be paidoned if he suspects that a President "re- 
strained by an honourable sense of what the international obligations of the 
United States demanded" would hardly have appointed a sot and a drunken 
adventurer to conduct delicate negotiations involving the honour of the United 
States in Texas. 



116 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

immediately to hand, of course, the zealous services of the ^eat 
army of federal employees. To supplement their efforts the 
South engaged a host of newspaper men, political orators, Prot- 
estant preachers, lecturers, cheap politicians and ward-heelers, 
and dispatched them into the enemy's camp — the North, there 
to work upon the ignorance, passions, and prejudices of the people 
in favour of the Southern shibboleths — slavery and the annexa- 
tion of Texas.* 

The tricks of the ruling class, whatsoever its nationality, are 
ever the same. While in Mexico the Catholic priests inflamed 
the people by preaching a "holy war'* against the heretic Texan, 
the Protestant clergy of the North preached a precisely similar 
"holy war" against the idolatrous Mexican, while the ruling 
classes of both sides rejoiced in the outcome of their schem- 
ing. 

Apologists for the part played by the United States in the 
annexation of Texas have professed to believe that the South 
was compelled to the step it took by the urgent need of territorial 
expansion for the support of its growing population, and as an 
outlet for its surplus capital. It is true that the spirit of modern 
commercial imperialism readily sanctions territorial rape urged 
by such necessities, but unfortunately for the apologists, the 
facts of the case lend no support whatever to their contention. 
In 1830 the South produced 5,600,000 bales of cotton; in 1902 
the same area of territory produced 34,575,000 bales of cotton. 
In 1830, then, at the time when Andrew Jackson was preparing 
to annex Texas, the South had already enough fertile land to pro- 
duce seven times more than she was producing. Clearly it was 
not economic necessity of this order that influenced the South. 
An economic necessity there certainly was; not the need of more 
territory, but the need of more voters for the maintenance of 
slavery and Southern interests in the national policies. In this 
respect the Mobile Advertiser of January, 1830, spoke with per- 
fect truth when it said: "The South wishes to have Texas ad- 

*F. Bulnes, "Las Grandes Mentiras de nuestra Historia," p. 145. 




MEXICAN TYPES 



Federal Soldiers. A native girl of pure Indian (Aztec or Maya) blood. 
A peon — his complete wardrobe 



THE TEXAS WAR 117 

mitted to the Union for two reasons, and the first of these is to 
equalize the South with the North." 

That the Texan revolt was not in the slightest degree a matter 
of Texan initiation, but the result, under the guidance of the 
Church in Mexico, of the intrigues of the Planting interests of 
the South, is demonstrated beyond a doubt when it is considered 
that in 1828, seven years before the question of revolt was even 
mooted among the Texans themselves, the following questions 
were put to Mississippi candidates to the national Congress: 
"What is your opinion of the acquisition of Texas? Should it 
be acquired by force or treaty? If Texas decided to secede, 
should we give the secession military assistance? What would 
be the effect of the acquisition of Texas upon the Planting 
interests?" (J. William, "A Review of the Mexican War," p. 
17.) 

Between the years 1830 and 1835 the intrigues of the plotting 
factions, Mexican Clerical and Southern Democratic, were 
vigorously prosecuted. The power of religious fanaticism to 
sway the good judgment of the people was well recognized by 
both parties; and if the cheap politicians and prostituted press 
performed yeoman service in the rape of Texas, no less valuable 
were the efforts of the Catholic priests on the one side and the 
Protestant clergy on the other. Indeed, Conclin (p. 105) 
rates the religious agitation as more effective than thie political : 
"Great as was the result of the political agitation, the effect of 
the working of the agents amongst the influential and wealthy 
churches and religious societies produced even greater results 
by the pitiful pleadings that Mexico was oppressing the con- 
science of the colonists." 

In 1835 matters reached the climax. In that year the law- 
fully elected governor of the State of Coahuila and Texas, 
Augustin Viesca Fonseca, was forcibly dispossessed of his 
office by General Santa Ana. The state legislature at once 
supported the Governor, and passed a measure in April, 1835, 
empowering him to organize bodies of civicos, to sustain by 



118 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

force the civil sovereignty. In view of the threatened advance 
of the army under Santa Ana, Viesca Fonseca deemed it wise 
to move the capital from Monclova to Bejar. While ejffecting 
the change he was arrested, together with the legislature, by 
General Cos, who immediately assumed the commandership of 
the state, and established military rule. 

This outrage on the civil prerogative was the immediate 
cause which led the patriotic Julian Travis to start his revolt 
with a small body of men, none of them, however, colonists. 
Desperately as the honour of the state had been wounded the 
Peace party were still loath to countenance open revolt. In 
their hopeless efforts to maintain peace they not only publicly 
repudiated the uprising under Travis, but offered to arrest him 
and deliver him to the Mexican authorities. 

Under such circumstances it would have been an easy matter 
for Santa Ana to have suppressed the insurrection with leniency. 
That, however, was the last thing contemplated by the Clerical 
party. Had they not laboured zealously for five years to achieve 
just this result, and were they now to miss the opportunity of 
fanning the promising spark of revolt into a respectable and 
serviceable flame? 

Accordingly Santa Ana's Minister of War, General Tornel, 
issued drastic orders on August 1, 1835, to arrest and punish 
with the extremity of the law all the leaders of the insurrec- 
tionary movement, Lorenzo Zavala, Jose Maria Calvajal, and 
Juan Zambrano, together with the colonial leader, Travis, and 
the agents of Andrew Jackson, Houston, Thompson, William- 
son, Baker, and William Moore, and all others connected with 
the revolt. The order, of course, was made simply to fan the 
flames. The actual force dispatched by General Santa Ana to 
carry out the threat and quench the activities of the revolu- 
tionists consisted of two hundred and fifty men! 

A large and competent force, not fully understanding what 
was required of it, might have taken the situation seriously, and 
ended the revolt in a few days. Such a thing would have been 



THE TEXAS WAR 119 

disastrous to the plans of the conspirators. The comedy had to 
be played to more purpose than this. 

Accordingly, the rebels, urged on by the American agents, 
were permitted to gain strength and organize their forces. A 
company of Mexicans, numbering four hundred men, under 
Juan N. Seguin, were already in the field, and by the 19th of 
October Austin had in his command an additional force of six 
hundred men. A few days later two filibustering companies, 
called the "Grays," arrived on the scene from New Orleans, 
followed immediately by a similar company from Mississippi. 

Then the mockery of war began. Neither the hired gunmen 
on the one side, more interested in pay and loot than in fighting, 
nor the underfed and brutalized Mexican regulars on the other 
side, had much heart in the campaign, and desertions on 
both sides were of daily occurrence. It must be remembered 
that the vast majority of the colonists held entirely aloof from 
the fray. Even at the most acute stage of the revolt the 
colonial contingent scarcely mustered 10 per cent, of the rev- 
olutionary forces. Indeed, but for the hired gunmen from the 
United States there could scarcely have been enough opposition 
to the Mexican forces to create even the illusion of a war. In 
the siege of Bejar, Austin lost six hundred of his twelve hundred 
men by desertions in a few days, and, after the town had fallen, 
such colonists as had remained in the ranks to the end returned 
to their occupations. Before disbanding, however, they or- 
ganized a legislative committee to maintain the insurrection 
in favour of — not Independence, not annexation to the United 
States, but in favour of the Mexican Constitution of 182 Jf! 

At this stage of affairs General Santa Ana arrived in Texas 
to take personal charge of the Mexican forces. His appearance 
infused fresh life into the farce that of late had fallen into im- 
minent danger of being hissed off the boards, and the colonists 
were at last goaded out of their determined efforts to keep the 
peace into something like serious revolt. 

The first notable engagement of the new campaign was the 



120 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

insane massacre of Alamo. In this action Captain Travis 
with eighty-three men was compelled to give battle to Santa 
Ana with an overwhelming force of fourteen hundred men. 
History has no record of a more cynically initiated or more 
bloodily executed encounter than this action of Alamo. Before 
the day closed every rebel had perished, while the Mexicans 
had lost seventy killed and four hundred wounded. The 
one bright spot in this day of infamy was the gallant courage 
of the patriotic but deluded and doomed Travis. 

Much wretched jingoism is taught in American schools in 
regard to this battle of Alamo in pursuance of a policy on the 
part of the educational authorities as narrow as it is vicious. 
The valour of the combatants on both sides is Incontestable. 
If the American volunteers exhibited a fortitude worthy of a 
better cause, a fortitude no less admirable was exhibited by the 
Mexicans, for it Is an army of the first class that will lose a third 
part of its strength in an assault. 

The only comment possible on thisincldent Is not oneof credit 
or discredit to either faction, but one of profound pity for all 
the deluded men, American and Mexican, who In their Ignorance 
fell a prey to the machinations of the planting interests of the 
South, and the intrigues of the Mexican Church. 

After the massacre of Alamo, Santa Ana, obeying the instruc- 
tions of the Church, entered upon a ruthless policy of extermi- 
nation, and hundreds of prisoners and wounded were mercilessly 
murdered at his orders. It was not that the necessities of 
the case demanded the "Iron hand," nor that Santa Ana 
himself had any particular antipathy to Americans — at least 
if he had, he was careful to conceal it on the occasion when he 
was feted by Andrew Jackson — but because it was necessary 
to arouse enough opposition to sustain the illusion of an inter- 
national war for the embarrassment of the Mexican Liberals. 

Finally, in a cowardly and clumsy encounter with the rebels, 
Santa Ana was made prisoner and compelled to sign a treaty 
recognizing Texan independence in return for his life. 



CHAPTER X 

CLERICAL PR^TORIANISM AND THE SUPREME 
CONSERVATIVE POWER 

"BY THESE presents be it known to all the army that on 
the 21st of April, 1836, the President of the Republic, General 
Don Antonio Lopez Santa Ana was made prisoner on the battle- 
field while fighting to save his country. Be it further known 
that while His Excellency the President of the Republic re- 
mains in prison, the flags and pennants of the army will be in 
mourning with crepe, and that the national flag will be flown at 
half-mast in the fortress, in the barracks and in the navy." 
In these words the Clerical government of Mexico wrote the 
epitaph of the Texas disaster. The colony was lost to Mexico 
forever. The real cause of its loss we believe we have estab- 
lished. "The truth is that we owe the loss of Texas to the mil- 
itarism imposed upon the colonists by Lucas Alaman, a leader 
loyal and faithful to the Clerical interests, and a man of the 
greatest credit with the Church — a militarism personified in 
the vices, ambition, corruption, and degradation of its General, 
Santa Ana." (Francisco Bulnes, "Las Grandes Mentiras de 
Nuestra Historia," p. 651.) 

The affair had served its purpose, and the Clerical party in 
power promptly relegated it to the limbo of forgotten things. 
Not so the people, however. They had been worked up to a 
high state of war-fever by the persistent harangues of the 
priests, and when the War Minister, Jose Maria Tornel, refused 
to send a regular army, they themselves organized a body of 
8,000 volunteers for the purpose of retrieving the lost territory 

121 



122 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

and wiping out the recent reverses to Mexican arms. Tornel 
permitted the volunteers to reach the nortliern deserts, and 
then in spite of the war-fund freely contributed by the citizens 
for their support, refused to send them either food supplies or 
ammunition, and they were compelled to return amid severe 
suffering, having accomplished nothing. 

On the 29th of December, 1836, the Clerical party in Congress 
took advantage of the national confusion to proclaim a consti- 
tution establishing the central system of government. The 
constitution likewise created a Supreme Conservative Power, 
consisting of five men with authority to veto or censor any law 
passed by Congress, or any measure adopted by the national 
executive, or the governors of the states, or any decision of the 
courts, or any election of rei)resentatives. It likewise had 
power to dissolve Congress or imj)each the President of the 
Republic or any other government official; while any diso- 
bedience to its orders, dispositions, or declarations was to be 
treated as a crime of high treason. The constitution further 
provided that no one possessing an income of less than thirty 
thousand dollars a year could be eligible to the Supreme Con- 
servative Power, that the clerical and military fueros be re- 
established, that state governors be appointed by the President 
of the Republic for a term of eight years, and that the home rule 
of municipalities be superseded by the api)oinlment of nmnici- 
pal political chiefs with executive powers, and finally that the 
state legislatures be wholly sup])ressed. To the establishment 
of this iniquitous constitution the Liberal party, demoralized 
by the recent war with Texas, was unable to offer any effective 
resistance. 

Meanwhile Santa Ana had gone to Washington where he was 
royally entertained by Andrew Jackson. When at length his 
visit terminated and he returned to Mexico on board the Ameri- 
can warship Pincer, courteously placed at his disposal by the 
United States President, it was with that perfect understanding 
of the mutual interests of the Church in Mexico, and the South- 



CLERICAL PR.ETORL\NIS:\I 123 

ern planters in the L^nited States that enabled him afterward 
in the war with the United States to play — with President Polk 
as partner, and with the bodies of men as pawns — a game of 
chess which surpassed the Texan affair as the work of masters 
surpasses the work of amateurs. 

Conditions in Mexico at this time were at their darkest. 
Special taxation had been decreed by Congress, from which, of 
course, Church property was entirely exempted; while nearly 
all the coin in the country was the debased product of counter- 
feit mints owned and operated by officers of the army. Pro- 
tected by the military fueros, the counterfeiters wrecked the 
jiublic credit with impunity, and with scarcely an effort at 
concealment. 

On the 17th of April, 1837, Anastasio Bustamante, that 
faithful watch-dog of the Clerical interests, was elected to the 
Presidency of the Republic — appointed to the Presidency of 
the Republic would more accurately state the case, for the ex- 
ercise of the franchise was so hedged about under the central 
system that all trace of popular will in the election of represent- 
atives was destroyed. Meanwhile Santa Ana remained qui- 
etly in the background, iDut close at hand to be ready for 
any emergency requiring his services. 

By this time the Texan war-fever was beginning to abate, 
and the people had reached the stage of hesitating between 
supporting the government, and attacking it with a view to 
reestablishing the federal system. Indeed, one or two sporadic 
rebellions of no great importance broke out in the states of 
San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Mexico, but they lacked general 
support and were readily suppressed. With the passing of 
another year, however, the old impulse of the people toward 
freedom began to gather way, and when on the 18th of February, 
1838, the great Liberal and ex-Vice-President, Valentin Gomez 
Farias, returned from exile to Mexico City, he was given a tre- 
mendous welcome by the masses. The Clerical party was not 
slow to recognize the signs of the times, and unable to revive 



124 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

much interest among the people in the Texan affair, decided 
to resuscitate a former plot conceived by Lucas Alaman during 
the first presidency of Bustamante for embroiling the nation in a 
war with France. In accordance with this policy some mild 
and entirely justifiable claims made by France against Mexico 
were repulsed with the utmost insolence by Bustamante, and 
on the 28th of March, 1838, the French Minister, Monsieur Le 
Baron Deffaudis, found himself with no recourse but to deliver 
his ultimatum to the Mexican Government. In speaking of 
this incident, Zamacois, a Catholic, a conservative, and an 
ardent defender of Bustamante, says: "The Mexican Govern- 
ment had no right to procrastinate on a matter so readily set- 
tled when France was so easily satisfied." (Zamacois, Vol. 12, 
p. 129.) Congress fully supported the action of Bustamante, 
and in a great outburst of patriotism, calling upon the Mexican 
people to fly to arms in the defence of the national honour, pro- 
claimed a war with France. 

In order to arouse the French, whose genuine desire for a 
peaceable settlement was well known to the government, all 
French citizens were ordered out of the country. At the same 
time Bustamante, in order to inflame the fighting spirit of the 
people, ordered the remains of Iturbide to be disinterred and 
brought from the State of Tamaulipas and paraded through the 
streets of Mexico City amid every conceivable martial display. 
The inevitable masses were sung, and priestly harangues deliv- 
ered, and the crumbling bones of the one time "emperor," were 
escorted to the cathedral through streets lined with troops and 
decorated with lavish splendour. Enormous sums were expended 
in this farce, while on the west coast of the country an earth- 
quake had left thousands of families destitute and starving. 

However the populace of the capital — always the ready 
prey of any Clerical ruse — might be dazzled by these childish 
tactics, they had little enough effect on the sturdy federalists 
of the old revolutionary State of Tamaulipas. Undaunted by 
the threat of French invasion, these men rose in revolt, seized 



CLERICAL PR^TORLINISM 125 

the port of Tampico and endeavoured to control the entire 
state. Meanwhile French warships were hovering off Vera 
Cruz, and the French diplomatic representatives who accom- 
panied the naval demonstration were straining every effort to 
effect an amicable settlement of outstanding disputes with the 
Mexican Government. Indeed, Admiral Baudin as special en- 
voy of King Louis Philippe went so far as to request the Mex- 
ican Government to appoint a committee to meet him, to the 
end that an invasion of the country be avoided and the conten- 
tion of the two nations be settled in peace. This committee 
was duly appointed, but with rigid injunctions to refuse every 
overture made by the French. At the same time Bustamante 
issued a theatrical manifesto to the Mexican nation in which 
he proclaimed that he was determined to defend even at the 
sacrifice of his own life the honour of the nation and the rights 
of the Republic against any foreign nation which should dare 
to besmirch the clear lustre of the fatherland; that his deter- 
mination was shared by the Supreme Conservative Power and 
by the national Congress; that the government had omitted no 
effort to arrive at a decorous and honourable agreement, but 
that in view of the haughty attitude of the French, who showed 
themselves unwilling to withdraw their insolent demands, he 
had no hesitation in choosing the hazards of war to dishon- 
ourable peace. To this, Admiral Bazoche, commodore of the 
French navy in the Gulf of Mexico, retorted by a public decla- 
ration to the effect that all diplomatic relations between France 
and Mexico had ceased, that Mexican ports were already in 
blockade, and that the war had been uselessly invited, and would 
be sustained, not against the Mexican people as such but 
against their corrupt administration. 

Immediately following this declaration the war began with 
an attack by the French forces on the port of Vera Cruz. At 
the critical moment Santa Ana, with his genius for the spectacu- 
lar, appeared on the scene to take charge of the Mexican army, 
and to restore the splendour of his prestige as the saviour of 



126 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

the nation. The encounter that ensued was the sheerest farce. 
The only serious casualty was the loss of a leg by Santa Ana. 
With admirable aplomb, and no whit dismayed, he managed 
to make good capital out of the incident by posing now as the 
blood-stained martyr in the cause of liberty. At this juncture 
in affairs Mr. Pakenham, the British Ambassador to Mexico, 
used his influence to dissuade Bustamante from further oppo- 
sition to the French demands. Accordingly a simple agreement 
was drawn up which the French consented to accept, and the 
war ended. Quite as strong, probably, as the arguments of 
Mr. Pakenham in influencing the Mexican Government to 
abandon their military flirtation with France, was the urgent 
necessity of suppressing the insurgents of Tampico, who un- 
seduced by the siren-calls of Bustamante to come to their 
country's aid, were, on the contrary, using every effort to arouse 
the other states to join them against the government. Santa 
Ana, temporarily disabled, was unable to proceed against the 
rebels in person, and when Bustamante asked permission of 
Congress to lead the army himself, his request was granted, 
and Santa Ana was appointed President in his place. 

The exchange was highly satisfactory to the Church, for 
Santa Ana was a much more energetic and facile man of affairs 
than the stupid and often wilful Bustamante. The first act of 
the new President was to arrest and throw into jail every news- 
paper man of the Liberal party, and every one suspected 
of holding Liberal opinions. This measure was immediately 
followed by the suppression of the Liberal Journals, El Cos- 
mopolita. El Restaurador^ and El Voto Nacional, and the de- 
struction of their plants. 

Finally Gomez Farias was arrested and thrown into prison. 
Mexico was again under the iron heel. 

The necessity of keeping the attention of the people from 
domestic affairs compelled the Clerical party once more to 
resuscitate the idea of a war with the United States for the 
recovery of Texas; and the Catholic press and cheap politicians 



CLERICAL PR^TORIANISM 127 

vied with each other in their efforts to inflame public sentiment 
in favour of the plan. The ruse succeeded immediately in so 
far as it gave the government sufficient strength to suppress 
the revolutionary movement for federalism in Tampico and 
Puebla. Later it was to find perfect fulfilment in a long and 
bloody campaign. 

Santa Ana, having suppressed the insurrection, again showed 
his theatrical genius by resigning while the plaudits and ac- 
claim of the populace still resounded. His place was filled in the 
interim by Nicolas Bravo, who resigned a few days later when 
Bustamante returned to resume his presidential duties. 

At this period Mexico's condition was appalling. Revolt 
and war, coupled with a fatuous disregard for the economic wel- 
fare of the country on the part of those in power, had re- 
duced the nation to utter exhaustion. The Church alone still 
remained prosperous. She was exempt from taxation, paid 
nothing for the support of the government, and the dire poverty 
of the people enabled her to exploit them with the lowest pos- 
sible compensation. 

Her selfishness and short-sightedness, indeed, went so far as 
to let the Government and Army, on which her own salvation 
depended, flounder on the verge of ruin for lack of sufficient 
funds. Such avarice would have provoked a prompt revenge 
had it not been that neither the official nor the military caste 
could have carried on their own particular depredations with- 
out the moral support and sanction of the Church. The 
Church and Army, moreover, were bound together by the 
common interest of maintaining the fueros, so necessary to 
their welfare, against the onslaughts of the Liberals. 

Needless to remark, we can find in the Church no trace of 
common humanity — much less of that sublime humanity 
which alone is religion — nor in the Army any trace of patri- 
otism. Both were merely predatory organizations for the pur- 
pose of appropriating the wealth produced by the toil of the 
common people. 



128 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The policy of the Church as the largest land-owner in the 
country was to exploit the wretched peons to the limit of human 
endurance in return for a pitiful pittance which mostly returned 
to her own coffers in Church taxes, forced donations, or pay- 
ments for prayers and masses. 

The generals and high officers of the Army, on the other hand, 
under cover of the fueros, supplemented their handsome sal- 
aries by operating counterfeit mints, gambling hells, and gaudy 
brothels; while the lesser officers contented themselves with 
mere blackmailing and open highway robbery. Occasionally 
the Army went into business for itself on a large scale and insti- 
tuted farcical revolts and uprisings for purposes of loot and rape, 
submitting itself, when satisfied, to the government, and inva- 
riably receiving pardon and reinstatement. In some of these up- 
risings the rapacious military even went so far as to pose as 
federalists, and on one of these occasions, the 19th of March, 
1840, they besieged President Bustamante in the national pal- 
ace for two days and looted the entire city, only consenting to 
abandon their frolic at the urgent entreaties of the archbishop. 

As for the common people of the time, they might be divided 
into three sections : those who, having succumbed to the malevo- 
lent hypnotism of the Church, had lost their spiritual birth- 
right and had come really to accept the debauching doctrines 
of the holiness of poverty and obedience; others who believed 
in neither but were cowed into submission; and still others who 
repudiated the Church and all her works, and, conscious of the 
bitter wrongs of their class, struggled to recover for themselves 
their lost position as human beings. 

Of these latter some were still duped by the persistent alarms 
of foreign war into delaying their activities, while a small but 
courageous minority refused to care whether the fatherland 
were invaded or not, and kept up a ceaseless struggle for liberty. 

Since the Church had plotted the Texas revolt all her plans 
had been successful in confirming her power; but she had by no 
means reached the summit of her ambitions. She now proposed 



CLERICAL PR^TORIANISM 129 

to embroil the nation in a war with the United States, and to 
take advantage of the national distraction in order to establish 
a monarchy by divine right. Such a monarchy, coupled with 
the central system of government, would give her again an un- 
limited despotism such as she had enjoyed under the colonial 
regime. The general misery and wretchedness of the country 
offered a good field for the agitation in favour of a monarchy. 
Moreover, President Bustamante, the government officials, the 
aristocracy of big land-owners, and the blackmailing, gambling, 
counterfeiting military were fully in favour of a plan which bid 
fair to perpetuate and consolidate their power. 

Accordingly on the 25th of August, 1840, Jose Maria Gutier- 
rez Estrada, a prominent Clerical politician and a close partner 
of Lucas Alaman, opened the campaign by publishing an open 
letter, suggesting to the government and the people the estab- 
lishment of a monarchy. 

"The Republic is death-struck by its own apostles," so ran 
the letter; "it is dying of inanition. We have seen the vitality 
of its moral life exhausted in sterile and cruel efforts. None will 
admit more readily than I the advantage reaped by other coun- 
tries from a republican form of government, but no one will 
lament more sincerely than I that Mexico at the present time is 
not in a position to enjoy these privileges. Judging by her re- 
cent unhappy experiences with this form of government, we are 
compelled to believe that the time has come when this country 
should make the effort to found a real monarchy in the person 
of a foreign prince." 

This letter, written to test the public sentiment of the time, 
created a storm of wrath and indignation throughout the coun- 
try, and even some of the generals of the army felt themselves 
compelled to protest as republicans. Among these protestants 
was Juan Nepomuceno Almonte. Twenty-four years later this 
very man, in company with the Gutierrez Estrada mentioned 
above, took a prominent part in the plot which made Maxi- 
milian the Emperor of Mexico. Immediately after the publica- 



130 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

tfon of this letter Gutierrez Estrada left Mexico for Europe for 
the purpose of interesting one of the European royal families in 
this matter of founding a monarchy. 

By the year 1841 the long-continued Clerical and military rule 
had crushed the people to such depths of poverty that even 
Bustamante had to take cognizance of the matter in his message 
to Congress, for the government itself was hard pressed by the 
general financial exhaustion. In the same message to Congress, 
Bustamante not only claimed that the resources of the common 
people were utterly depleted, but also that it would be necessary 
to look elsewhere for funds, and went so far as to complain of the 
importunate interference of the Supreme Conservative Power in 
the administration of the country, protesting that it hampered 
every act of the Executive, of Congress, and of the Courts. 

It was a bold step for a President, spawned by the Church and 
a cuartelazo, to criticise the Supreme Conservative Power; for 
it was the purpose of the Church which created this oligarchy 
of five men presently to reduce its number to one man with ab- 
solute dictatorial powers, and later to transform this dictator- 
ship into an unlimited monarchy. This undiplomatic utterance 
of Bustamante, coupled with several other blunders (one of which 
was the lenient treatment of a French citizen suspected of sell- 
ing the works of Voltaire) , convinced the Church that her tool 
had outlived the period of his usefulness. 

Accordingly the inevitable cuartelazo was again invoked, and 
Santa Ana, always at hand for emergencies of this nature, was 
given charge of it. As a preliminary step the Church, through 
the instrumentality of Juan Mariano Paredes Arrillaga, one of 
her many myrmidons, issued a manifesto in which it was pro- 
claimed: 

I. An Extraordinary National Congress will be elected for 
the sole purpose of reframing the constitution. 

II. The Supreme Conservative Power will elect a man pos- 
sessing its confidence as chief e^cecutiye with dictatorial powers. 



CLERICAL PR.ETOIMANISM 131 

who will give an account of his acts to the first Constitutional 
Congress. 

III. The present Congress will convene to declare that the 
present President is unfitted for his high office, and the Supreme 
Conservative Power will enforce the decree. 

IV. The chief executive will have the power to decide the 
date of the meeting of the Extraordinary Congress, the method 
of the election, and the time of its duration. 

The manifesto concluded with a series of accusations against 
the government and a declaration of the dismissal of President 
Bustamante. It is interesting to note that it was President 
Bustamante who in 1820, when he was Vice-President, had 
started the cuartelazo which overthrew the great President 
Guerrero on the plea that he was insane and unfitted for his 
position. 

The military uprising began in the State of Vera Cruz, where 
Santa Ana was in command of a large force; and similar upris- 
ings immediately followed in Mexico City and in all parts of the 
country. When Bustamante found himself deserted he promptly 
appealed to the Liberal party in the fatuous belief that the 
men whom he had persecuted for years would now support him. 
His overtures were repulsed with scorn. Hysterical at the idea 
of losing power, he then played completely into the hands of 
the Church by proclaiming the federal system, with himself, of 
course, as federal President. 

"This sudden proclamation of the federal system had no 
connection whatever," says the historian, "with any one of the 
Liberal leaders, and none who was a Liberal would give his 
name to this performance." ("Mexico a traves de los Siglos," 
Vol. 14, p. 47.) The Liberal party clearly foresaw that the day 
would come when the Supreme Conservative Power would 
have so utterly discredited itself in the eyes of the people that 
there would be a unanimous and spontaneous revolt against it. 
That moment, they recognized, would be the political oppor- 



132 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

tunity of the Liberal party, and they were too good tacticians 
to spoil such an excellent chance by any premature action at the 
bidding of such a mere adventurer as Bustamante. 

Bustamante's hopeless faux pas was received with joy by 
the Clerical party, and Santa Ana immediately addressed a 
note to the Supreme Conservative Power couched in the follow- 
ing terms: "Sir: The federal constitution having been pro- 
claimed by General Bustamante, or under his auspices, he has 
thereby become a rebel and bereft himself of the power which, 
according to the constitution of 1836, had been placed in his 
hands. Consequently the Supreme Conservative Power is in 
a position to dictate the measures which the constitution ac- 
cords it in order to dismiss him from power, and I, myself, and 
my army are ready to give to you all the protection which you 
may require." In this note we see that Santa Ana makes no 
effort to conceal his intention of becoming dictator, and his 
cool assurance in offering to protect the Supreme Conservative 
Power shows how confident he was in his ability to impose his 
will on Clericals and Liberals alike. 

Bustamante, after making a fatuous resistance in the national 
palace, was overpowered by Santa Ana and exiled to Europe, 
while the victor was overwhelmed with messages of congratula- 
tion from the chapter of every cathedral in Mexico. It is 
significant of the depths to which the Church had fallen that 
she found herself no longer able to command, but was com- 
pelled to bribe and beg the support of one military adventurer 
after another. The first act of the new dictator was to organ- 
ize a large army, and to this end he ordered tens of thousands 
of peons to be impressed, while for the equipment and main- 
tenance of this vast host the Church authorized him to sell 
those of her estates whose revenues were used for the support 
of the missions in California. 

On the 5th of March, 1842, the elections for Congress were 
held; and in spite of the fact that the franchise under the central 
system was so limited and beset with restrictions as to render 



CLERICAL PRiETOItlANISM 133 

any expression of the popular will almost impossible, when 
Congress convened it proved to be strongly Liberal. 

In its first deliberations it proceeded to pass measures de- 
priving Santa Ana of his dictatorial powers, and establishing 
the freedom of religious belief and of the press. Santa Ana 
found himself out-generalled on the political field, and resorted 
to his usual tactics of asking for leave of absence for the purpose 
of plotting another cuartelazo. Nicholas Bravo was appointed 
as his substitute. The Church, realizing that nothing advan- 
tageous to her own interests was to be expected of Congress, 
supported Santa Ana, and the War Secretary himself, Jose 
Maria Tornel, addressed secret orders to all the garrisons of the 
country to prepare for another uprising. 

On the 18th of September the plot came to a head. Congress 
was prorogued by military force, and Santa Ana returned to 
Mexico City to complete his plans for the future. Money was 
the prime need of the hour. The demoralization of the govern- 
ment and the terrible poverty of the people made it impossible 
to replenish the exchequer by the usual taxation, and the Church 
and aristocracy were compelled to supply the funds required. 

Having reorganized the army, Santa Ana again took leave of 
absence in order to conspire more freely with the Church, and 
on the 6th of October, 1843, General Valentin Canalizo, an 
old officer of the royal army, was appointed as his substitute. 

At this time another calamity fell upon the impoverished 
and oppressed people. The savage Indian tribes of the north, 
in a series of raids, swept down on the states of Sonora, Chihua- 
hua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and San Luis Potosi, leaving be- 
hind them a terrible trail of smoking ruins and slaughtered 
villagers. The Clerical government required the services of 
the army for its own intrigues, and refused to send aid to the 
stricken people, who were compelled to defend themselves as 
well as they might. 

Meanwhile the upkeep of the army was beginning to prove 
a source of great annoyance to the Church and Aristocracy. 



134 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Although recognizing the necessity of maintaining a large and 
well-equipped force for the furtherance of their interests, they 
could not reconcile themselves to the expense it entailed, an 
expense hitherto borne by the common people. It mattered 
not that the common people had been already reduced to the 
depths of poverty, and were unable to contribute another cen- 
tavo, nor that the army was used, as indeed every army since 
class rule began has been used, purely to promote the interests 
of the ruling class and to oppress the toilers, they still found 
Santa Ana's repeated requests for money highly provoking, the 
more so because it was well known that he embezzled the larger 
part of these funds for his own private use. 

The new dictator thus soon fell into deep disfavour with 
Clericals and Liberals alike. The time, however, had arrived 
for the presidential elections. Santa Ana had long been sched- 
uled for this position, and it was too late to elect another man. 
Accordingly on the 6th of January, 1844, Santa Ana was duly 
elected President by the House of Representatives, which by 
this time had been permitted to reconvene. The pending 
trouble with the United States kept the Liberals from indulging 
in armed action, but they were quick to seize any advantage 
which the situation offered for gaining ground in the political 
field; and on this occasion they readily cooperated with the dis- 
gruntled Clericals against the hated Santa Ana. 

At first conditions seemed favourable to the new administra- 
tion. The United States had recently annexed Texas, and the 
United States warships were anchored in the harbour of Vera 
Cruz. Santa Ana at once took advantage of the situation to 
ask Congress to authorize him to raise a loan of four million 
dollars to fit out an expedition for the recovery of Texas. Con- 
gress, however, refused; the Clericals, because they feared the 
money would be taken from their own coffers, and would most 
probably be used by Santa Ana himself; the Liberals, because 
they were utterly opposed to Santa Ana and to a war with the 
United States. 



CLERICAL PR^TOMANISM 135 

When Santa Ana realized that his demands were not to be 
granted, he asked for his customary leave of absence to plot with 
his confederates another forcible expulsion of Congress. As 
interim President in his place General Jose Joaquin Herrera 
was appointed during the temporary absence of Canalizo, the 
real appointee. 

Now followed another period of confusion in which cuartelazo 
followed cuartelazo. Finally, Santa Ana was crushingly de- 
feated by the Clerical forces and exiled on parole. On his way 
to Vera Cruz, however, he endeavored to make another stand. 
Again he was subdued, and after much begging was permitted, 
in June, 1845, to leave the country for Havana. 

The anarchy which the Church and Army imposed upon 
Mexico at this time is not a matter for surprise. Both organi- 
zations wherever and whenever they exist are by virtue of their 
nature incapable of assimilating or acting upon any idea of social 
order or development. In this instance, relieved by their cun- 
ning intrigues from effective opposition, they gave to the nation, 
for government, the cabal; for order, wild riot; for economic 
administration, the cuartelazo. This was the sum of their ac- 
tivities, and wherever given unrestricted sway the sum of their 
activities is invariably the same. If we read the history of the 
military rule in Rome when the Praetorian Guard was making 
and unmaking emperors at will, we shall discover a marked 
similarity between the conditions obtaining then and the con- 
ditions in Mexico during the middle of the last century. 

The reader may well ask why the people endured this state of 
affairs — why they did not revolt.^ The answer lies in the fact 
that wherever the people have attained some stage of civilization 
and autonomy they would rather a thousand times suffer des- 
potism than endanger their national integrity. The Church 
and Army were careful to keep the people in constant fear of 
war, for they well knew that in face of national danger effective 
domestic revolt was impossible. 

The new President, General Joaquin Herrera, elected during 



136 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Santa Ana's last campaign, in spite of his clerical affiliations, 
proved to be a man of sane, patriotic, and humane ideas. Real- 
izing that Mexico in her depleted condition was utterly incapable 
of contesting the United States' claim to Texas, and that the 
bogey of war so carefully fostered by the Clerical party was 
demoralizing the national life, he readily acceded to the propo- 
sals of the American Minister and officially recognized the 
annexation of Texas. 

This was a vital blow at the cherished schemes of the Church. 
The menace of war gone, the people would turn with renewed 
energy to the prosecution of the domestic reforms so urgently 
demanded by the appalling conditions of the time. Not for a 
moment could this be permitted, and the Church immediately 
began to plot the overthrow of Herrera, as she had plotted the 
overthrow of Bustamante and Santa Ana. Again the cuartel- 
azo was invoked under the leadership of the same Paredes Arril- 
laga who had headed the uprisings against Bustamante and 
Santa Ana. 

On the 14th of September, 1845, this pliant tool of the Clerical 
party raised a rebellion at San Luis Potosi, where he had been 
stationed with six thousand men for the ostensible purpose of 
protecting the frontier against the United States. In his proc- 
lamation to his troops he charged Herrera with treachery to the 
fatherland in acceding peaceably to the annexation of Texas, 
and in endeavouring to supersede the army by the organization 
of bodies of civicos, significantly adding that the necessities of 
the country required a complete change of institutions, and for 
that reason an extraordinary Congress would be elected for the 
purpose of putting an end to a system of government which had 
proved entirely inadequate. The conspiracy of the Church to 
force a monarchy upon the country had by this time thoroughly 
matured, and this final announcement of Paredes Arrillaga was 
the first practical step toward its realization. 

Instead of continuing his march against the United States, 
Paredes Arrillaga returned to Mexico City at the head of his 



CLERICAL PR^TOHIANISM 137 

troops. Herrera, too sane and too well versed in the political 
methods of the time to offer a futile resistance, peaceably re- 
signed; and in a caucus of army generals and a few self-ap- 
pointed delegates from the various states, under the chairmanship 
of Manuel Posada, Archbishop of Mexico, Paredes Arrillaga 
was appointed President of the Republic in his place. The 
caucus also proceeded to call for an election of representatives 
to an extraordinary Congress to be held within the next four 
months for the purpose of entirely changing the political institu- 
tions of the country. 

The Liberal press, which had enjoyed a measure of liberty 
under the all too brief regime of Herrera, was now utterly sup- 
pressed by the new President; and it became evident to the 
Liberal leaders that the Church was preparing with the utmost 
energy to manacle the nation and deliver it up blindfold to the 
tender mercies of a despotic hereditary monarchy. 

Meanwhile the war cloud, which had bid fairto dissipate under 
Herrera's peaceable administration, began to gather again in the 
north. Squadrons of United States battleships hovered off 
Mazatlan and Acapulco, while news began to arrive at the 
capital that Monterey and San Francisco in California were 
already occupied by United States troops. 

The Church was not slow to take advantage of the agitation 
which this news caused throughout the country to push forward 
her plans for the establishment of a monarchy. On the 24th of 
January of the same year, 1845, there appeared the first issue of 
the Clerical ojQBcial organ. El Tiempo, under the editorship of 
Lucas Alaman, and several other prominent ecclesiastics. In 
the third issue of this paper the caucus of self-appointed dele- 
gates and military chieftains, under the Archbishop of Mexico, 
Manuel Posada, published a call to the people for the election 
of an extraordinary Congress for the purpose of framing a 
monarchical constitution for Mexico. 

In order to qualify as a representative to this Congress it was 
necessary for a candidate to be either a land-owner, a merchant, 



138 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

or a manufacturer, paying taxes of at least one hundred and 
fifty dollars a year. In addition to these regulations, aimed at 
the utter disfranchisement of the common people, the right to 
vote was denied to all salaried employees and wage-earners. 
To the soldiers, however, was given the right to vote without 
restriction of any kind. 

Step by step with the Clerical conspiracy for the establish- 
ment of a monarchy in Mexico there had advanced another 
conspiracy germane to the first, the conspiracy for war with the 
United States. Only amid the carnage and confusion of a for- 
eign invasion could the Church feel at all safe in the prosecution 
of plans so bitterly distasteful to the great mass of the people. 
The invocation of war had been in this instance an easy matter; 
for if the ruling class in Mexico desired war for their own salva- 
tion, no less did the slave-holding ruling class of the Southern 
States desire a war for the purpose of diverting the attention of 
the North from the now vexed question of abolition. This 
declaration, as we have seen, was published on the 19th of Feb- 
ruary, 1846, and in the next month, on the 6th of March, General 
Taylor received orders at Corpus Christi to march on Mexico, 
and on the 25th of April following, the first engagement of the 
war took place. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 

THE war with the United States, like the war with Texas, 
was a preconcerted and predetermined affair on the part of the 
ruling classes of both of the nations involved. The popular 
furor aroused by these classes should not be allowed to obscure 
the real origin of the war. All that we have said in regard to the 
causes of the war with Texas remains equally true for the causes 
of the war with the United States. 

Indeed the war with the United States can only be correctly 
regarded as a prolongation and enlargement of the war with 
Texas. It was but a mightier effort on the part of the planters 
of the South to gain fresh slave-holding territory in order to add 
to their representation in Congress, and to divert the attention 
of the North from abolition; it was only a mightier effort on the 
part of the Church in Mexico to divert the attention of the 
people from the question of domestic reform, and to hold in 
check the eternally impending insurgency by causing the whole- 
sale massacre of the more devoted and patriotic spirits among 
the peons. 

For many years, and more particularly since the Texan affair, 
the ruling classes of both nations had tried by every means to 
embitter, prejudice, and inflame the minds of their respective 
peoples against each other. While the Catholic priests and poli- 
ticians of Mexico held up to their audiences the most appalling 
picture of the savage, rapacious, lustful, and heretical American, 
in the United States the politicians, Protestant clergy, and news- 
paper men hired by the Southern slavocracy held up to their 

139 



140 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

audiences the no less appalling and ludicrous picture of the wild- 
eyed, treacherous, cruel, and idolatrous Mexican. It took years 
of this persistent psychological debauchery to stamp these pic- 
tures on the peaceable and right-minded people of both countries. 
But the work was well done, and to this day the ignorant Ameri- 
can has just this view of the Mexican, and the ignorant Mexican 
has just this view of the American. 

The causes of the war with the United States, as we have said, 
were essentially the same as the causes of the war with Texas, 
but since 1836 a new factor had arisen in the policies of the 
Church in Mexico which greatly added to her desire for war — 
her determination to establish a monarchy. She foresaw 
clearly that a war with the United States would be disastrous, 
bloody, devastating; not that, on level terms, the Mexican 
Roland was unequal to the American Oliver, but because the 
Mexican generals under her instructions would see to it that the 
terms should not he level. She foresaw that after the war the 
people, demoralized, exhausted, and humiliated, would be in no 
position to oppose her swift, determined action, and a monarchy 
could be established and intrenched — the lavish guardian of her 
policies and her interests — before concerted action on the part 
of the people became possible. It cannot be too clearly em- 
phasized that in this war with the United States the Church was 
the confederate of the South. She not only did not wish to win, 
but desired to see the nation drained of its last drop of patriot 
blood. To that end her generals yielded up strategic points 
without a shot, led vast armies of gallant peons into waterless 
wildernesses and left them there to perish of thirst, removed arms 
and destroyed ammunition, and played into the enemy's hands 
in every conceivable way. The only effective resistance offered 
to the United States troops in Mexico was made by the volun- 
teers and companies of guerillas operating independently of the 
military chiefs. 

Subsequent to the Texan war the Democrats of the South, at 
that time in control of the national policies of the United States, 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 141 

immediately instituted a campaign of annoyance and insolence 
against Mexico in the hope of goading her into some act of open 
aggression. They reaKzed that, in view of the enormous develop- 
ment of the North, the acquisition of Texas alone would be 
insufficient to secure their continued political dominance, and 
they were determined upon a war of aggression against Mexico 
for the seizure not merely of Texas, but of the whole territory of 
the Rio Grande del Norte, now known as Colorado, Utah, and 
New Mexico. At the same time they recognized that the great 
body of the American people were opposed to an armed invasion 
of the sister Republic without just and sufficient cause. 

Such cause would soon have been forthcoming had the Cler- 
ical party constituted the majority of the Mexican nation. As 
a matter of fact, they were a small, if dominant, minority, and 
it was necessary to arouse the active aggression of the whole 
people before a war could be at all possible. In accordance 
with this policy General Gaines of the American army invaded 
Texas and occupied Nacogdoches. When the Mexican minister 
at Washington entered a protest against this infringement of 
international law he was not vouchsafed even the courtesy of a 
reply, and found himself forced to withdraw. This open af- 
front proving insufficient to precipitate the desired casus belli. 
President Jackson proceeded to submit exaggerated and ri- 
diculous claims to the Mexican Government for alleged offences 
against American citizens and property on the part of Mexican 
subjects. "The administration thought it necessary to raise 
a note of whining, concerning alleged offences against American 
citizens, coupled with the most exaggerated claims for compen- 
sation." (J. Williams, "Review of Causes," p. 24.) That 
these claims, some fifteen in number, were at least doubtful, 
is proved by the note accompanying them, addressed by Mr. 
Forsyth to Mr. Ellis, the United States Minister to Mexico at 
that time, which reads: "The State Department is not in 
possession of the proofs of all the circumstances of the injuries 
committed as alleged by the interested parties." The State 



142 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Department in pursuing this policy had, as we have said, a 
perfectly well-defined purpose. " It was only to a feeble nation, 
one whose hostility was courted for ulterior designs, that the 
administration would have hazarded such insolence." (J. 
Williams, "Review of Causes," p. 49.) 

The claims mentioned were presented to the Mexican Gov- 
ernment in the most offensive fashion with a scarcely veiled 
threat of armed invasion if they were not satisfied within four- 
teen days! The American Minister in Mexico City, Powhatan 
Ellis, to whom was assigned the task of goading Mexico into 
war, was admirably fitted for the purpose. His insulting be- 
haviour added fresh point to the attitude of the United States 
Government and succeeded in arousing not only the anger of the 
ojQficial class but of the whole Mexican nation. "Mr. Forsyth 
of the State Department was a fit agent and Ellis was a fit 
instrument for the occasion; the latter was a Mississippian and 
a slave-holder. He wanted war, he wanted Texas, and he ful- 
filled his instructions to the letter." (Bancroft, "History of 
Mexico," Vol. 3, p. 309.) 

And when Ellis notified President Jackson that only by the 
exercise of armed force could Mexico be compelled to honour 
the claims made against her by the United States, Jackson sent 
a message to Congress which ended with the following words: 
"I recommend that an act be passed authorizing reprisals, and 
the use of the naval force of the United States by the Execu-' 
tive against Mexico to enforce them, in the event of a refusal 
by the Mexican Government to come to an amicable adjust- 
ment of the matter in controversy upon another demand 
thereof made on board of one of our men-of-war in the Gulf of 
Mexico." 

After the independence of Texas the planting interests of the 
South had decided, as we have said, upon the annexation not 
only of Texas but of as much additional territory as possible, in 
order to counterbalance the rising power of the North. Ac- 
cording to a high authority, John Quincy Adams, "from the day 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 143 

of the battle of San Jacinto every movement of the administra- 
tion of the Union would appear to have been made for the ex- 
press purpose of breaking off the negotiations and precipitating 
a war with Mexico for the purpose of obtaining the concession 
of not only Texas but of the whole course of the Rio Grande del 
Norte. . . . Instructions on the 20th of July, 1836, from the 
Secretary of State to Mr. Ellis, almost immediately after the 
battle, were evidently premeditated to produce a rupture, and 
were but too faithfully carried into execution. . . . Ellis' 
letter of the 26th of October, 1836, to Mr. Monastario was the 
premonitory symptom, and no true-hearted citizen of this 
Union can read it, and the answer to it on the next day by Mr. 
Monastario, without blushing for his country." * 

In view of the truculent attitude of the United States, and 
the eagerness of the Clerical party in Mexico for war, it might 
seem a matter of surprise that hostilities did not break out im- 
mediately. As a matter of fact it required eight years of per- 
sistent plotting and agitation on both sides to produce the war 
with Texas, and ten years more to produce the war with the 
United States. This alone would prove conclusively that these 
wars were not the spontaneous outcome of the antagonism 
of the two nations, but the product of the machinations of a 
numerically insignificant cabal. The truth is, history bears no 
record of a war instigated by the common people, or of a war 
fought by the ruling class. It is invariably the ruling class 
which instigates war in the furtherance of its own interests, 
and invariably the common people who do the fighting. To 
arouse an entire nation of peaceable and industrious folk to the 
point of bloodshed and slaughter is not the task of a moment. 
It is a task which often takes years of steady misrepresentation 
and calculated agitation. In spite of the bitter goadings of 
the United States and the wily intrigues of the Church in Mex- 
ico it required altogether eighteen years to produce the ca- 
lamitous and disastrous war which came near to realizing the 

*Quoted in Bancroft's History. 



144 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

plans of the instigators, and near to hurling back the society of 
the larger half of North America into the slavery and despotism 
of the dark ages. 

For the exercise of the United States policy of deliberate ag- 
gression against Mexico, the post helium developments of the 
Texas affair provided innumerable opportunities. After the 
Texas colonists had acquired independence by the Treaty of 
1836 they evinced no great eagerness to be admitted to the 
Union. That this indifference on their part caused consid- 
erable anxiety to the planting interests of the South was shown 
by a note of January 4, 1844, addressed by Mr. Upshur, President 
Tyler's Secretary of State, to the American agent in Texas, 
which reads: "Instead of being as we ought to be, the closest 
of friends, it is inevitable we shall become the bitterest foes. 
Without annexation Texas cannot maintain the institution of 
slavery ten years — probably not half that time." 

The Texas colonists, however, presently found themselves 
compelled to change their minds and seek shelter within the 
Union when they discovered that the strong anti-slavery senti- 
ments of the British Government were to be a constant menace 
to their liberty. "In August, 1843, Lord Brougham had made 
some remarks which were considered ominous to the slave in- 
terests, while as far back as 1829 Huskisson, in a speech before 
Parliament, denounced the manoeuvres of Washington toward 
withdrawing Texas from the Mexican Union, and clearly stating 
that the British Government ought to maintain Mexico in pos- 
session of Texas." {Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1840, p. 
637.) The Texas colonists were, of course, well aware of the 
designs of the South upon them, and only consented to annexa- 
tion when at last it seemed that no other course was feasible. 

On the 23rd of August, 1843, the Mexican Government re- 
ceived the news that the United States was about to annex 
Texas, and notified the American envoy, for the information of 
his government, that such a step would be regarded as a casus 
belli. The next day the Secretary of State at Washington in his 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 145 

reply warned the Mexican Government that the repetition of 
such a threat would be considered incompatible with the respect 
due to his government. When a little later Mr. Polk was 
nominated as candidate for President by the Democratic party 
to succeed President Tyler, it was solely on his open pledge to 
carry out the immediate annexation of Texas, and on his tacit 
pledge to invade Mexico. In the party convention the Demo- 
crats of the North had been out-generalled, and compelled to 
accept Polk's candidacy, and to submit to the demands of the 
Southern planting interests. In due time Polk was elected and 
took his stand at once as the champion of the South, not only in 
the matter of the annexation of Texas, but in the vigorous prose- 
cution of the war with Mexico. 

While these post bellum developments of the Texas affair had 
been providing the United States Government with an excellent 
lever for forcing the nation to accept an invasion of Mexico, the 
United States warships had been busily occupied in raiding 
Mexican ports, seizing Mexican war vessels, notably in the in- 
stance of the United States gunboat La Natchez, which confis- 
cated the Mexican cutter General Urrea in the harbour of 
Mat amor OS. The claims entered by the Mexican Government 
against Washington for these acts of outrage were completely 
ignored, as also were its protests against the organization of 
filibustering expeditions in New Orleans for the invasion of 
Mexico. At the same time a United States warship landed 
troops at Monterey, California, before any declaration of war 
had been made. 

"Texas secure, Mexico exasperated, and diplomatic relations 
at an end," says Bancroft, "everything was now favourable to 
secure the war determined upon, which would result in the ac- 
quisition of more valuable territory, including much-coveted 
California. Such a war, however, to be popular or even toler- 
ated in the Northern States of the Union must be made to appear 
a deliberate act of Mexico. It would be a fine stroke to pretend 
to further negotiations and even feign a reconciliation, however 



146 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE ^ 

hypocritical it might be. This failing, as care would be taken 
that it should fail, Mexico might easily be provoked to strike the 
first blow. It would then be, on the part of the United States, 
a war of defence, not of aggression, and the national conscience 
would be satisfied. This was the policy adopted by President 
Polk, and it met with the most infamous success." (Bancroft, 
"History of Mexico," Vol. 6, p. 340.) 

At last the climax came, and the Clerical administration 
in Mexico was able to announce with scarcely concealed joy: 
"Mexicans! Mexican blood has been shed on Mexican soil by 
Yankee soldiers," while in the United States President Polk 
announced with no less satisfaction: "Americans! American 
blood has been shed upon American soil by Mexican soldiers." 
Both announcements were equally false, but they served their 
purpose, and war began. 

The incident which led to the climax was the march of General 
Taylor from Corpus Christi to Point Isabel in Mexico with an 
army of thirty-five hundred men — a deliberate invasion of 
Mexican territory, although no war had been declared. When 
Taylor reached Arroyo, Colorado, he was notified by the citizens 
that his crossing the river could only be considered as a declara- 
tion of war. To this remonstrance he paid no heed, and, con- 
tinuing his march to Point Isabel, he dispatched General Worth 
across the Rio Grande with a message to General Mejia, com- 
mander of the Mexican forces, expressing a desire for friendly 
relations. 

In view of this unprovoked and unannounced invasion of 
Mexican territory on the part of General Taylor, such a message 
was an insult, and it was treated as such. By way of reply, on 
the 11th of April, 1846, General Ampudia, commanding officer of 
the Mexican forces on the frontier, ordered General Taylor to 
break camp within twenty -four hours and retire across the bor- 
der to the left bank of the Nueces. The order was ignored, and 
thereupon hostilities began. 

On the 25th of April the first blood of the campaign was shed 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 147 

when a Mexican contingent ambuscaded a force of United States 
troops under Captain Thornton, killing several of them and 
taking the rest prisoners. As soon as the news of this affair 
reached Washington, President Polk sent a message to Congress 
affirming that American blood had been shed on American soil 
by Mexican soldiers, and requesting Congress to make the facts 
known, and to declare war on Mexico. 

Completely blinded by the long campaign of misrepresenta- 
tion, culminating in this last unscrupulous ruse, the people of 
the United States not only acquiesced in the war, but now were 
seized with a frenzy of blood-lust which must have appalled and 
terrified the men responsible for it, and yet, Mr. Bagby , Senator 
from Alabama, speaking on the floor of the Upper House, said: 
"The life of one citizen of the United States is of more value 
than the lives of a hundred thousand Mexican women and 
children." And his words may be taken as an accurate index of 
the spirit of the time. 

The war began with the disastrous conflict of Matamoros, 
where over a thousand Mexican soldiers lost their lives. The 
survivors endeavoured to reach Monterey; the great majority 
of them, however, succumbed to thirst, starvation, and fatigue 
on the way. The United States Government took advantage 
of the victory to demand of Mexico the surrender of California 
and New Mexico, under pain of further armed castigation. The 
demand was indignantly refused, and the war proceeded. 

On the 19th of September, 1846, at Monterey, after five days' 
battle, in which they exhausted all their ammunition, the Mexi- 
can forces again suffered defeat and the loss of a thousand 
men at the hands of the invading army. Meanwhile the savage 
Indians of the north renewed their raids into Mexico, carrying 
fire and slaughter into the very heart of the country. 

Against the invading Indian as against the invading Ameri- 
can the Mexican people had no protection other than they 
themselves could offer, for by this time the Clerical party was 
requisitioning all the troops of the country for another cuar- 



148 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

telazo in order to rid itself of President Paredes. In spite of 
his bitter persecution of the Liberals, President Paredes had 
fallen into deep disfavour with the Church by requesting her 
to contribute a levy of two million pesos toward the necessary 
expenses of the war. Without considering that her own an- 
archy had impoverished the people beyond the possibility of 
taxation, and that by her exploitation and oppression she had 
absorbed almost the entire wealth of the country, the Church 
was greatly incensed by this request and immediately decreed 
the President's overthrow. The hero of no less than three anti- 
presidential cuartelazos was now compelled to taste his own 
medicine. 

On the 20th of May, 1846, the garrison of Guadalajara, 
headed by General Mariano Salas broke into revolt, and issued 
a proclamation in which it demanded that President Paredes 
be overthrown for conspiring to establish a monarchy, that 
Santa Ana be recalled, and, strange to tell, that the federal 
system be reestablished. The hypocrisy of the charge against 
Paredes is obvious when we consider that this General Mariano 
Salas, who now waxed so indignant at the idea of a monarchy, 
was a few years later one of the most active conspirators in the 
plot which seated Maximilian on the throne of Mexico. The 
demand for the federal system was merely a lure thrown out to 
delude the populace and baffle the opposition of the Liberals. 

The tortuous Clerical labyrinth of this period would defy 
analysis were it not for the clues of Greed and Fear. Armed 
with these clues we can soon penetrate the most secret recesses 
of involved Jesuitical chicanery. In this succession of polit- 
ical insanities, which appear to the casual observer inextric- 
ably involved and utterly unreasonable, we find at last only 
the determination of the Church never to relinquish her prey 
or face her foes. 

A few days after the uprising in Guadalajara, the garrisons 
of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, Mazatlan, and Mexico City followed 
suit. The unanimity of the revolt in such widely sundered 




THE FAMOUS FLOATING 



Copyright by Underwood b' Underwood, N. 
GARDENS NEAR MEXICO CITY 



These tiny farms give eloquent evidence of the thrift and agricultural skill 
of the Mexican farmer on his own land 




Copyright by Underwood &° Underwood, N. F, 
FEDERALS 
The splendidly equipped and well -trained Federals encamped outside the City 
of Mexico awaiting President Huerta's command 




y\ 



Copyright by The International News Service 
CONSTITUTIONALISTS 
A section of rebel cavalry advancing to the battle of Juarez of December, 1913 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES il49 

parts of the country shows that it had been well prepared and 
timed. In this cuartelazo, as in all the cuartelazos since the 
one which wrenched the fruits of the Independence from the old 
insurgency, the people took no part whatever. Since the noble 
constitution of Apatzingam had died still-born in the southern 
hills, the people of Mexico, except for a few brief months, had 
held no voice in the administration of the country. Paredes, 
when he recognized the strength of the cuartelazo, quietly sub- 
mitted to his fate and resigned. The Church, acting through 
the instrumentality of Salas, imprisoned him for a while to 
demonstrate the possibilities that awaited her recalcitrant ser- 
vants, and then dismissed him into exile in Europe. 

Meanwhile, Santa Ana, having been summoned from Hav- 
ana, arrived at the seaport of Vera Cruz, August 12, 1846. 
And here occurred an incident, small in itself, but affording 
proof, if further proof were needed, that the Clerical party and 
military chiefs in Mexico were cooperating in unison with Presi- 
dent Polk and his cabinet in Washington. The ship which 
bore Santa Ana was seized and searched in the Bay of Vera 
Cruz by Commander David Connor of the United States fleet, 
but Santa Ana was released and permitted to land in compli- 
ance with the following note of instructions from the United 
States Navy Department: "May 13, 1846. Commodore: If 
Santa Ana tries to enter Mexican seaports, let him pass un- 
challenged. Respectfully yours, George Bancroft." 

The cuartelazo had proved eminently successful. Paredes 
in exile, and Santa Ana in power, the Clerical party now pro- 
ceeded to deflect and confound the opposition of the Liberals by 
inviting their cooperation in the support of the President in the 
establishment of the federal system, going so far indeed in their 
hypocritical overtures as to appoint Gomez Farias to the leader- 
ship of the new cabinet. In due time the elections were held, 
and Santa Ana was elected President, with Gomez Farias Vice- 
President, while Congress, in spite of the disfranchisement of 
the people, exhibited a strong Liberal minority. 



150 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Meanwhile, as we have seen, a division of the United States 
Army had already captured Monterey in the northwest. Other 
divisions were now invading Chihuahua in the north, and Cali- 
fornia in the west, while a United States squadron blockaded 
Mazatlan. In the absence of the regular army, deliberately 
withdrawn from the seat of war by the Clerical party, the Mexi- 
can volunteers, ill-equipped and unprovisioned, made heroic 
efforts to repulse the invaders, but with little success. 

When Congress convened it authorized Santa Ana to take 
general command of the army, and appointed Gomez Farias 
interim President in his place. Santa Ana thereupon left 
Mexico City for San Luis Potosi, ostensibly to organize the 
country's defence and hurl back the invader. His first action, 
however, was to play directly into the hands of President Polk 
and the Mexican Clerical party, by withdrawing General Parrodi 
and his entire garrison from Tampico, thus abandoning the sec- 
ond seaport in Mexico to United States occupation without an 
effort at defence. A little later General Taylor arrived with 
his army before Cuidad Victoria, and again Santa Ana withdrew 
the garrison, giving up another strategic point to the invaders. 

Gomez Farias, as President, was now compelled to face a 
problem which had caused the downfall of his predecessors, 
Bustamante, Santa Ana, Herrera, and Paredes — the problem 
of obtaining adequate financial support not only for administra- 
tive purposes but for the conduct of the war. He saw clearly 
there was but one method of procedure possible, and accordingly 
sent a message to Congress requesting the passage of the follow- 
ing measure : 

"The Government is authorized to appropriate the sum of 
fifteen million dollars for the conduct of the war with the United 
States by mortgaging or selling in public auction the estates held 
in mortmain (Church property) . . . It is further 
authorized that all the funds collected under this law be used in 
the defence of the country, and that the Government give ac- 
count to Congress of the use of these funds every six months/' 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 151 

This solution of the diflficulty was, of course, viewed with wrath 
by the Church. To quote Baz: "This blow to the Church, 
whose selfishness had been the cause of more than one disgrace 
to the nation, caused tremendous consternation. As she then 
dominated the conscience of the nation through the medium of 
the confessional, and as her influence extended into the sacred- 
ness of the home, to the wives and children of her opponents, 
it was easy to create a powerful opposition to these laws, and all 
her efforts were bent with great energy against Gomez Farias." 
(Gustavo Baz, " Vida de Juarez," p. 45.) 

Congress indeed passed the law in spite of the fierce opposition 
of the Church, but its effect was to a large extent nullified by the 
refusal of the Clerical governors of the states to carry its provi- 
sions into execution. 

We now come to an incident which startlingly reveals the exact 
nature of this terrible mock-war. We refer to the deliberate 
destruction of a Mexican army of eighteen thousand men, the 
great majority of whom were volunteers, by all the horrors of 
starvation, thirst, and fatigue. This disaster was brought about 
by Santa Ana himself, in connivance with the Church and United 
States authorities. 

When Santa Ana made San Luis Potosi his base of defence, 
his army was joined by thousands of Mexican patriots — peons, 
tenant farmers, and citizens — the brawn and muscle of the 
nation, who had willingly left wives and homes and children to 
offer their lives in defence of the fatherland. In this impetuous 
host, hardened by toil, filled with high courage, and eager to 
drive the invader out of the country, Santa Ana saw a grave 
menace to the cherished schemes of his co-conspirators. Presi- 
dent Polk and the Church. He had seen too much of the old 
insurgent spirit and capacity not to know that these men prop- 
erly officered would speedily put the control of the war out of 
his reach and bring it to a rapid conclusion — glorious for them, 
but disastrous for him and the schemes with whose execution he 
was entrusted. These men had to be put out of the way, Ac- 



15^ THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

cordingly he organized them into an army which, with a few 
regular troops, totalled some 18,000 men, and led them out into 
the waterless desert, half armed, unequipped, and unprovisioned, 
on a march of three hundred miles, ostensibly to attack General 
Taylor at La Angostura, but in reality to die a thousand deaths, 
and to fall at last in battalions, crazed and exhausted, the 
prey of coyotes and vultures. For twenty-six days the rapidly 
dwindling host of doomed patriots struggled on, by day seared 
under a heaven of burnished brass, by night half paralyzed by 
the icy chill which only the desert knows, without tents or 
blankets, without food or water; while Santa Ana and his officers 
travelled ahead with a magnificent entourage, revelling in the 
choicest of foods and wines. The following picture by an eye- 
witness gives an intimate idea of the conditions of this terrible 
march: "The cold tormented us in a way difficult to describe, 
and the army was already broken-spirited. More by instinct 
in our desperation than from clear knowledge of our actions, we 
set fire in different places to the yucca plant grove in which we 
were. The flames ran up to the tops of the trees, and an ocean 
of fire swept from tree to tree in terrible waves of blasting 
flame. . . . The spectacle was sublime, and by its light 
we saw the hungry soldiers dying of starvation, shivering with 
cold, like an army of ambulant corpses." (Zamacois, "Historia 
de Mejico," Vol. 12, pp. 576 to 581.) 

On the 23rd day of March, 1847, the spectre-army finally 
encountered the United States forces under General Taylor at a 
point on the Saltillo road called La Angostura. Santa Ana had 
undoubtedly calculated that those of his troops who survived 
the march would fall an easy prey in their exhausted condition 
to United States bullets. In this surmise he was only partially 
correct. For when the famished Mexican volunteers saw be- 
fore them not only their hated enemy, to face whom they had 
endured such incredible hardships, but also substantial food 
supplies, they fought with such desperation that, mere ghosts 
that they were, they would have carried the day had not Santa 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 153 

Ana in pursuance of his settled policy recalled them at the mo- 
ment of victory, and ordered a general retreat. The battle 
that had begun without rest for the volunteers had raged for 
two days, and thirty-five hundred of them lay wounded and 
dead upon the field. During the preceding terrible twenty-six 
days' march, four thousand of them had perished. Now more 
exhausted than ever, and still without food, water, or shelter, 
they began the awful retreat. Of the 18,000 men, hale and full 
of courage, who had left San Luis Potosi but two months before, 
only 5,000 returned, and of these the majority were the regulars 
who had been better equipped and provided for than the heroic 
volunteers. 

But Santa Ana had accomplished his purpose. The volun- 
teer and largely Liberal army of defence had been wiped out. 

It was necessary, it must be remembered, that the Mexican 
people should be disastrously and overwhelmingly defeated in 
order that the United States might enforce her sweeping terri- 
torial demands; it was necessary that the war should be pro- 
tracted, and that the spirit of the people should be crushed and 
humiliated in order that all possible resistance on their part to 
the Clerical schemes for the establishment of a monarchy might 
be forestalled . To Santa Ana had been entrusted by both Presi- 
dent Polk and the Clerical party in Mexico the task of achieving 
these ends, and no one can say he failed. 

Meanwhile the Church had been plotting the overthrow of 
President Gomez Farias for his temerity in attempting to realize 
a war fund by the sale of her estates. Under the pretext of 
defending the country the idle aristocracy of Mexico City or- 
ganized themselves into a militia, ironically nicknamed "Los 
Polkos" by the Liberal wits of the day, from the favourite 
society dance, the polka, then recently imported from France. 
In the absence of the regular army this aristocratic militia, 
reinforced by the friars themselves, raised a miniature cuartel- 
azo against the President, and recalled Santa Ana to the capital. 
When the latter arrived he at once resumed his office as Presi- 



154 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

dent, and a few days later Congress at the Clerical bidding 
abolished the office of Vice-President altogether. Following 
this, on the 2nd of April, 1847, Santa Ana was again given leave 
of absence to rejoin the army, and Pedro Maria Anaya was ap- 
pointed his substitute. 

While the ecclesiastics and polka dancers were rejoicing over 
the prosperous issue of their intrigues in Mexico City, the United 
States army, consisting of 12,000 men and 160 warships and 
transports, under General Winfield Scott, had already begun the 
bombardment of Vera Cruz. The garrison of the beleaguered 
city consisted of only 4,000 Mexican soldiers, and, according to 
Horace Greeley, "During four days and nights a torrent of 
burning iron fell upon the city, and so destructive was the fire 
that it reduced the place to ruins in a short time with a tremen- 
dous destruction of life. The Mexican garrison, numbering 
3,000 men, another thousand defending the castle of San Juan 
de Ulua, displayed great courage, but they were lacking in 
artillery to oppose to ours, and a much larger force was neces- 
sary to serve the batteries in the city." 

To quote from another historian: "Bombs were thrown up- 
on hospitals, where men and women were killed, and while 
the volunteers of the national guard were fighting everywhere, 
scorning death, the women, the children, and the old men were 
running in despair and fear through the streets seeking a place 
of safety from the rain of missiles which the besiegers poured 
unceasingly into the city. ... In view of the circum- 
stances the foreign consuls tried to arrange a truce so that the 
defenceless people might leave the city. . . . Commodore 
Perry, however, refused." (Zamacois, **Historia de Mejico," 
Vol. 12, p. 653.)* 

The action of Commodore Perry in this instance, sustained 
and endorsed by General Winfield Scott, was a practical appli- 
cation of Senator Bagby's speech in the Upper House to which 



*Zamacois, whom we quote so frequently, let it be remembered, was a Catholic, 
a Spaniard, and an admirer of the United States. 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 155 

we have referred. In this speech, it will be remembered, he 
advised the wholesale massacre of Mexicans, affirming that the 
life of one citizen of the United States was of more value than 
the lives of a hundred thousand Mexican women and children. 

The irrefutable documents of this period prove that this 
policy of indiscriminate and wanton slaughter of Mexicans was 
not only openly advocated by President Polk and his cabinet, 
by the United States press, and even by the pulpit, but was 
zealously carried out on the field of action. "President Polk,'* 
says Bancroft, "waged a devastating war, and yet pretended 
to be sighing for peace. His supporters in the press advocated 
the bombardment of Mexican cities and inhuman destruction 
of Mexican life. These barbarous sentiments were aggravated 
by the false pretexts under which they were urged, namely : that 
Mexico had provoked the war." (Bancroft, "History of Mex- 
ico," Vol. 5, p. 547.) " Plunderings, massacres, cruelties, the 
killing of the wounded on the field of battle," says another, 
"even, in some cases, burning alive at the stake, have been re- 
corded on the highest official authority as a part of the history 
of the Mexican War." (Livermore's "War with Mexico," p. 
263.) "'Destroy the city of Mexico, level it with the earth on 
which it stands. Serve Puebla, Queretaro, Jalapa, Saltillo, 
Monterey in the same way, and then increase our demands,' says 
one. 'Unless we distress the Mexicans, carry destruction and 
loss of life to every fireside, and make them feel the rod of iron, 
they will not respect us,' says another. The Union, Polk's 
organ, says: 'Henceforward we must seek peace and compel 
it by inflicting on our enemies all the evils of war.' The 
foreign consuls wrote General Scott, March 24, 1847, of the 
frightful results. The New York Herald says that the bom- 
bardment placed the town in ruins, under which great numbers 
of non-combatants — men, women, and children — were buried." 
(Bancroft, "History of Mexico," Vol. 5, p. 546.) 

This hideous slaughter continued for four days, and after 
2,500 men and uncounted numbers of women and children had 



156 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

been destroyed, the city surrendered to the invaders. At the 
occupation of Vera Cruz, Gen. Winfield Scott issued the follow- 
ing ingenuous proclamation and caused it to be widely distrib- 
uted among the people. It read: "Mexicans, at the head of 
a powerful army whose strength will be doubled shortly, which 
is about to advance upon the capital of the Republic, while at 
the same time another army under the command of Major 
General Taylor is on the march from Saltillo toward San Luis 
Potosi, I believe that it is my duty to announce to you that the 
Americans are not your enemies but your friends. But we are 
against those of your people who have compelled us to bring 
this unnatural war between two great Republics. We are 
friends of the peaceable people of this country; we are friends of 
your holy religion, of your prelates and ministers. In our own 
country we have the same Church and many devout Catholics 
who are well respected by our government, our laws, and our 
people. Since the beginning I have done everything in my 
power to put under the protection of martial law, and under my 
own protection, against lawless men, the Church of Mexico, and 
inoffensive people and their property." 

The significance of the last paragraph becomes clear when we 
consider that Scott was acting with the knowledge of President 
Polk, in full connivance with the Clerical party in Mexico. 
After the United States occupation of Mexico City we shall 
witness him feted and courted by the ecclesiastics, and enter- 
tained at picnics where all drank to the toast: "The annexation 
of Mexico to the United States . " 

After the fall of Vera Cruz, the peasants of the old revolution- 
ary states of the coast adopted the method of guerilla warfare, 
and were thus enabled to make a much more effective resistance 
to the invader than the already betrayed troops of Mexican 
regulars. Meanwhile the emaciated remnant of the great volun- 
teer army — 5,000 men who alone had returned from La Angos- 
tura to San Luis Potosi — had been hurried thence without rest 
to Mexico City and thence again to Cerro Gordo in the State of 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 157 

Vera Cruz. Here they were joined by another body of 5,000 
doomed patriots — mostly untrained peons, raw recruits — and 
the entire force commanded by Santa Ana in person, marched 
against the United States army under General Scott with the 
ostensible purpose of intercepting its advance on Mexico City. 
In view of the fact that the Angostura contingent was still suffer- 
ing the effects of its recent ghastly experience, and that the local 
contingent was all untrained and unequipped, their chances of 
effective resistance, even under honest leadership, would have 
been small. But Santa Ana, true to his task, deliberately de- 
livered them up — mere impotent cannon food — to the highly 
trained troops and powerful artillery of the United States army 
under General Scott, and scarcely a man of them survived. In 
this instance, as in the case of the La Angostura massacre, and 
all his connived defeats, Santa Ana sent a grandiloquent message 
to Mexico City announcing a glorious victory over the invader ! 

After the battle the English Minister to Mexico City proffered 
his services to the governments of the two contending nations in 
the interests of peace. When the fact became known, however. 
Congress was stormed with petitions from all parts of the coun- 
try demanding the continuance of the war. The Mexican 
people, now thoroughly aroused, contemplated no cessation of 
hostilities short of the complete evacuation of the country by 
the invader; and the organization of new bodies of volunteers 
went on apace. Meanwhile the guerillas, supported and pro- 
visioned by the townspeople and peasantry, were causing the 
United States forces no little embarrassment. General Scott, 
therefore, issued a proclamation laying upon the alcaldes 
(judges) of the various districts in which these guerilla bands 
operated, the burden of suppressing them under pain of heavy 
fines and the confiscation of their property. 

Following the defeat of Cerro Gordo, Santa Ana retired 
to Puebla ostensibly to intrench himself within its walls to again 
oppose the invader. When he entered the city, however, 
he found that the Clerical governor and bishop had akeady 



158 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

agreed to deliver it up to the United States army on condition 
that the persons and property of the ecclesiastics were properly 
respected, and he accordingly proceeded with the remnants of 
his army and a few pieces of artillery to San Martin Texmel- 
ucan. The inner history of this episode, as contained in docu- 
ments placed at our disposal by Manuel Baranda, minister 
of foreign relations, is in small compass, the whole inner his- 
tory of the war with the United States, and we make no 
apology for detailing it here at some length. 

From these documents it transpires that as soon as General 
Winfield Scott had taken possession of Vera Cruz, he entered 
into communication with Monsgn. Pablo Vasquez, Bishop 
of Puebla, through the medium of the Curate of Jalapa, Father 
Campomanes, for the surrender of Puebla. In his reply the 
Bishop wrote: "If you warrant me that the persons and es- 
tates of the ecclesiastics are protected, I promise you that not 
one gun shall be fired from the city of Puebla." "Accepted," 
replied General Winfield Scott. The Bishop thereupon in- 
fluenced the state legislature to appoint the brother of his 
private secretary, Rafael Inzunza, as governor of the state. The 
new governor, at the dictation of the Bishop, then dispatched 
a communication to the central government stating that the 
city of Puebla was lacking the elements for its defence, and that 
it could not be expected to offer resistance to the invading army. 
In addition to these measures, and to forestall any possible 
spontaneous defence on the part of the people, the Bishop in- 
duced Cosme Furlong, the local military commander, to remove 
to Izucar de Matamoros all the armament and war materials 
left in the city by the army which had recently passed through 
it on its way to the defence of Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo. 
Thus, when Santa Ana entered the city with the relics of his 
army and a few pieces of useless artillery, he found no equipment 
for the organization of its defence, and was compelled to aban- 
don it. It is not to be supposed, however, that this was a matter 
of either grief or surprise to the commander-in-chief. We have 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 159 

no positive proof that Santa Ana was privy to this arrangement 
at Puebla, but his ready acquiescence in its results, coupled 
with the knowledge we have of his previous exploits at La An- 
gostura and Cerro Gordo, makes it impossible to believe that 
he was not. In due time the invading army marched into 
Puebla with bands playing and flags flying, and peaceably 
bivouacked in the plaza. Thus fell the last outpost between 
the invaders and Mexico City. 

On the 19th of August, 1847, the United States army, under 
General Winfield Scott, laid siege to Mexico City, and for two 
days the battle raged furiously, resulting in the loss of a thou- 
sand men on the American side, and of an unknown number on 
the Mexican side. A truce was then called for the purpose of 
peace negotiations. These having failed, on the 8th of Sep- 
tember hostilities were renewed. In the ensuing battle, which 
with short intermissions continued for five days, the defenders 
— for the most part volunteers and citizen militia — stubbornly 
disputed every inch of the ground at a tremendous sacrifice of 
life on both sides. The fate of the city was still undecided, 
when on the night of the 13th of September the Mexican gen- 
erals held a secret conclave in the national palace and decided 
that, having feigned a sufficient defence, it was now high time to 
withdraw the troops and betray the city into the hands of the 
enemy. 

Accordingly, under cover of the darkness, the entire defend- 
ing force was ordered out of the city to Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
a village some three miles distant; and on the morning of the 
14th the citizens awoke to find the city abandoned and the 
United States troops already within its gates. The volunteers, 
helped by their wives, still kept up the now hopeless struggle 
fighting from barricade to barricade, and pouring a stream of 
fire from the house-tops upon the invaders. Again and again 
the defenders, mostly workingmen, sent to Santa Ana begging 
reinforcements or at least ammunition. Santa Ana refused to 
aid them in any way. 



160 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

"The inhabitants of Mexico City" says Baz, "fought the 
invading army for three days in the streets and plazas, and from 
the roofs and balconies of the houses, without receiving any 
assistance from General Santa Ana, who was encamped with his 
army at Guadalupe Hidalgo, only three miles distant. An 
attack at this moment might have changed the entire aspect 
of the war." (Gustavo Baz, " Vida de Juarez," p. 51.) 

At the end of the third day, the heroic volunteer defence was 
abandoned for lack of ammunition, and the city surrendered. 
On the same day, the 16th of September, 1847, Santa Ana, fear- 
ing the approaching storm of national indignation which his 
treacherous actions had evoked, resigned the presidency; and, 
according to the law, the office fell on the president of the Su- 
preme Court, Manuel de la Pena y Peiia. The remnants of 
the Mexican army now retired toward Puebla, many of them 
deserting en route, and many others forming themselves into 
guerilla bands. 

The provisional President, Pena y Pena, although a promi- 
nent member of the Clerical party, was not personally involved 
in the conspiracy of the Church to devastate Mexico for the 
purpose of making her submit presently to a despotic monarchy; 
on the contrary, he was a man of good intentions, who endeav- 
oured to handle the difficult situation which confronted him 
to the best of his ability. His defective education and fanatical 
devotion to the Church, however, blinded him to the real issues 
at stake, and prevented him from taking an effective stand 
against the intrigues and treachery which enmeshed him. His 
first act as President was to remove his seat of government from 
Mexico City to Queretaro. He then proceeded formally to 
discharge Santa Ana from his position as commander-in-chief 
of the army, ordering him at the same time to remain in Tehua- 
can pending a court-martial investigation into his conduct of 
the war. 

At this time Mexico's wretched condition was being rendered 
still worse by the outbreak of a race war in Yucatan, by blood- 



i 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 161 

thirsty Indian raids in the states of Chihuahua and Zacatecas, 
and by the revolt of the mihtary garrison of Mazatlan. 

Again the American Minister, Nicholas P. Trist, addressed 
peace proposals to the Mexican Government. The President 
and his cabinet were willing enough to put an end to the disas- 
trous war, but they were compelled to await the assembling of 
Congress at Queretaro before formally acceding to the proposals 
put forward. 

Meanwhile Mexico City was enduring all the travail of a for- 
eign occupation. The army, under General Scott, had been 
allowed to break loose from all restraints and had delivered 
itself up to an orgy of indescribable debauchery.* Murder, 
rape, and pillage went unchecked, while to add to the horror of 
the situation, hordes of raw recruits and volunteers — chiefly 
gunmen and the social offal of the underworld — poured into 
the city from the United States, ostensibly to join the army of 
occupation, but in reality to give full rein to their love of 
license. 

"In the midst of this Saturnalia," says Zamacois, the Spanish 
historian who was in Mexico City at this time, "the most pro- 
found respect and consideration toward the Church was ob- 
served and enforced by the United States military authorities. 
The Catholic p4iests were respected and the churches were open 
all the time. No molestation was permitted to any of the reli- 
gious ceremonies, processions, street parades, or public celebra- 
tions. General Scott, who had a very high idea of the wisdom 
and virtues of the Mexican clergy, publicly stated that he re- 
spected, and would make respected by everybody, the national 
religion; and thus owing to the tactics and talents of the illus- 
trious Archbishop Juan Manuel Irisarri, the Church kept her 
rights and was fully respected. (Zamacois, "Historia de Mej- 
ico," Vol. 13, p. 49.) Proof enough of the perfect mutual under- 
standing and good will which existed between the Church and 
the invaders! Indeed, when General Scott appointed council- 
*Zamacois, "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 13, pp. 38-40. 



162 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

men for the city of Mexico, he allowed the Church to advise him 
in their selection; and later when carousing with the same Clerical 
appointees at a picnic given by them in his honour he did not 
hesitate to respond to their infamous toast, "The annexation of 
Mexico to the United States ! " One can imagine that banquet 
ringed by the menacing spectres of tens of thousands of slaugh- 
tered patriots whose bodies lay rotting on the battlefields of 
Mexico ! 

At last Congress convened; the representatives had been sum- 
moned again and again to Queretaro to transact the momentous 
business in hand, but owing^ partly to the disorganized condition 
of the country, and partly to the indifference of many of the 
Clerical members a sufficient quorum was not obtained until 
November 2, 1847. The governors of the states likewise had 
been summoned to attend the national council, but few of them 
obeyed. For the most part members of the Clerical party, they 
saw in the country's distress only the necessary preconditions 
for the establishment of a monarchy, and viewed the efforts of 
the administration to end the war with indifference or frank dis- 
favour. A few there were, however, possessed of Liberal ideas, 
notably Governor Benito Juarez, of Oaxaca, and these promptly 
attended the President's summons. 

On the 11th of November Congress elected Pedro Anaya as 
President ad interim, and on the 18th of the same month took 
up the consideration of the peace proposals put forward by the 
American Minister, Nicholas P. Trist. Their deliberations 
were, of course, greatly influenced by the utter bankruptcy into 
which the nation had fallen. The treasury was empty; taxation 
was impossible, and when some of the Liberal newspapers sug- 
gested that the administration enforce a loan from the Church, 
General Winfield Scott promptly checkmated with a circular 
published on the 23d of November, couched in the following 
terms: "The army of the United States having taken posses- 
sion of the city of Mexico and its surroundings on the 14th of 
September, all the rights and authorities of the Mexican Govern- 



THE WAH WITH THE UNITED STATES 163 

ment are invested in the United States; and it is declared that 
any transactions or agreements made in regard to the Church 
property in Mexico constitute an attack upon the United States 
authority, and that any act of this kind will be severely punished, 
and, further, that if the ecclesiastical interests are in any way 
endangered, those interests will be confiscated by the United 
States and kept under its control and protection.'* 

Adequate financial resources are, of course, the prime necessity 
to the conduct of a war. This Scott well understood, and in 
order to render it still more impossible for the Mexican Govern- 
ment even partially to emerge from bankruptcy, he obtained 
authorization from President Polk to impose a levy of $2,500,000 
on the revenues of the country for the maintenance of the United 
States army of occupation. 

Meanwhile, however, both General Scott and Nicholas P. 
Trist were using every effort to conclude the negotiations for 
peace. Both men had seen enough of the temper of the common 
people of Mexico to fear a violent reaction from their present 
state of apathy and demoralization. Said Mr. Trist on this 
point: "Let the spirit of desperation be awakened and then 
things will have a very different aspect from what they now 
have. This country cannot resist ours with success, but the re- 
sistance of which it is yet capable, even if it is only partial and 
unsuccessful, must have a very different spirit. We ought to 
take into account that the best fights that have been put up yet 
on the part of the Mexicans in the Valley of Mexico have been 
by volunteers untrained and not belonging to the regular army." 

In the matter of the peace negotiations Congress was much 
divided; for, although the Clericals having accomplished their 
object were now in favour of peace, some of them were aroused 
by the humiliating proposals advanced by Nicholas P. Trist, and 
voted against their own party in favour of a continuance of the 
war. The partisans of peace, however, were in control, and they 
were able to impose their will in the matter, albeit secretly, and 
against the wishes of the nation. Accordingly, on February 2, 



164 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

1848, a peace treaty was signed by the representatives of the two 
governments. 

Under its provisions Mexico agreed to cede to the United States 
Texas, New Mexico, and California, which included, likewise, 
all the territory known to-day as Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, 
and Utah, and to accept in compensation thereof the sum of 
fifteen million dollars. The treaty was drawn up, signed, and 
ratified by Congress with the utmost secrecy, for the Clerical 
party had good grounds to fear that if its humiliating provisions 
became prematurely known, the people would rise up, overthrow 
the government, and continue the war. Even the official an- 
nouncement of the conclusion of peace dispatched by the Presi- 
dent to the governors of the states was couched in hypocritical 
and misleading terms. When finally the news leaked abroad, 
the moment for action had already passed, and the people were 
compelled to accept the dismemberment of the country in addi- 
tion to the horrors and miseries of the actual conflict. 

One might well ask, in reviewing this war and the pact which 
terminated it, why the United States did not annex Mexico 
in entirety. The answer to this question lies in the fact that 
the United States was already strongly divided against itself. 
The war had been invoked wholly by the planting interests of 
the South. The North, largely opposed to it from the first on 
political, economic and humanitarian grounds, had viewed its 
bloody progress with rising wrath, and in face of an opposition 
now dangerously bitter, the planting interests dared not push 
their imperialistic schemes too far. Indeed, Nemesis was 
already approaching, and the South so far from extending the 
period of her supremacy had onlyhastenedher inevitable conflict 
with the North. Furthermore, President Polk, General Scott, 
Minister Trist, and their associates foresaw clearly that even if 
the annexation of Mexico could be efected without invoking 
serious complications with the European powers — a matter 
much in doubt — the Mexican people themselves could never 
be subdued. To patrol indefinitely a territory, vast, arid, and 




Copyright by The International News Service 
A LITTLE REBEL PATRIOT 
Guadalupe Candeleria, 15 years old, went into the thick of the fighting around 
Juarez, in November of 1913, and carried out the wounded 




Copyright by The International News Service 

GENERAL LUIS TERRAZAS CLAIMS UNITED STATES PROTECTION 

One of the largest land-holders, Terrazas is here shown just after he had crossed 

the border to the United States after the revolutionists had 

taken possession of his vast estates in Chihuahua 




A TROOP OF RURALES 

The Mexican rural police, originally the roving bandits, were organized by 

General Diaz into one of the most efl&cient fighting machines in the 

country, and rendered yeoman service against the small land-owners 




Copyright by The International News Service 

A BATTERY OF MEXICAN FEDERAL ARTILLERY 

The Federal artillery consists of about 250 pieces, more than half of which is 

of the most modern types — the Snider-Canet and the 

St. Chamaund-Mondragon 



THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 165 

infested with guerilla bands, would entail an expense out of all 
proportion to the economic and political gains which would 
accrue from its possession. Moreover, the annexation of Mex- 
ico meant that the United States Government must support 
her ally, the Catholic Church, against the Liberals in their 
ceaseless struggles for democracy — a course of action which 
would be abhorrent to the Northern traditions and policies. 
And, finally, the South knew well that Mexico, if annexed, 
would join with the North against her own cherished scheme of 
disrupting the Union and establishing an independent repub- 
lic based on chattel slavery. Indeed, scarcely was the peace 
treaty signed before the strong anti-slavery sentiments of the 
annexed territories, Colorado and New Mexico, became clearly 
evident, and the South had to recognize that for all her blood- 
shed she had gained only Texas. These territories at the time 
of the Civil War, far from helping the South, contributed larger 
and better equipped contingents to the cause of the North, in 
proportion to their population, than any other two states in 
the Union. 

The war was ended. A war made by slave-holders and priests 
in which slave-holders and priests lost neither life nor property 
• — a war made to strengthen the grip of the oppressor upon the 
people, and to destroy that noble element to be found in every 
nation, whose glory it is, in peace, to labour for the emancipa- 
tion of the enslaved, and in war, to fight for their fatherland. 
The men who died in this struggle were, on the one side, the 
deluded American regulars, youths from the farm and the home- 
stead, raw, ignorant, hot-headed, and hypnotized to their 
death and their manhood's disgrace by the false shibboleths of 
their country's ruling class; on the Mexican side, the volunteers, 
for the most part workingmen, who, knowing nought of the 
base conspiracy to betray and murder them, freely sacrificed 
their lives to preserve their hearths and homes from the in- 
vader. These alone paid the penalty. 



166 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The official military classes on either side were but slightly 
damaged. Twenty -five thousand men of the United States 
working class had lost their lives, and $165,500,000 of money 
contributed by the United States working class had been spent. 
The loss in life and money on the Mexican side is unknown; 
at a conservative estimate it must have been at least double 
the loss of the United States. The war was ended; to what good? 
It had made of Mexico a shambles, and of her capital a brothel; 
it had left a legacy of ungovernable race hatred between the 
two nations which persists to this day. It failed to achieve 
even the miserable object of its instigators, for the new terri- 
tories opposed slavery, and never permitted a slave-holder 
within their borders. Indeed, in its reaction twenty years later 
it destroyed its instigators, broke the power of the South and 
abolished chattel slavery from America. And in that single 
glorious achievement, may be, all the bloodshed and travail 
found historical compensation. It seems a tortuous and bloody 
path to so elementary a goal, but while class rule persists it must 
be even so. 



CHAPTER XII 

CLERICAL INTRIGUES FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT 
OF A MONARCHY IN MEXICO 

PRESIDENT ANAYA'S term of office had now expired, 
and Congress elected General Jose Joaquin de Herrera in his 
place. On the 31st of May, 1848, the new President assumed 
office, and on the 12th of June the American army, having with- 
drawn, he reestablished his seat of government at Mexico City. 

The demoralized and exhausted condition of the country 
proved, as had been anticipated, the best possible milieu for 
the Clerical agitation for a monarchy. Under the sinister and 
capable leadership of Lucas Alaman the conspiracy throve 
apace. The ably conducted Clerical journal. La Patria, was 
already in the field, and now another journal. El Universaly 
was established to educate the masses into a proper apprecia- 
tion of the benefits to be derived from a monarchical form of 
government. 

Bustamante, an old royalist and a willing monarchist, had 
already returned to the country from his exile, and was now 
commander-in-chief of the army; there was even some move- 
ment made toward recalling Santa Ana. The peons were once 
more tilling the fields, peacefully yielding up the products of 
their toil to the Church and the big land-owners. The danger 
of domestic revolt was now far removed, and had it not been 
for the numerous bands of guerillas still at large, who, no 
longer required by their country, preferred to become bandits 
rather than again yield to the yoke, the country would have 
been in an ideal condition from the ruling class point of view. 

167 



168 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Meanwhile the arrears of pay due to the generals and officers 
of the army were settled in full. So numerous were the latter, 
however, that this effort on the part of the government to fore- 
stall the military discontent, and at the same time to meet the 
usual administration expenses, almost bankrupted the ex- 
chequer. The people were crippled, the army contented, the 
Church triumphant, and a monarchy at last in plain view. 

The intensely reactionary and jealous temper of the Church 
at this time was. revealed when a Liberal paper in the city of 
Vera Cruz suggested to Congress the enactment of a measure 
establishing religious freedom in Mexico, The suggestion, of 
course, evoked a storm of indignation from the Church, and 
President Herrera, in an exaggerated and theatrical rebuke, 
sent an appeal to the Pope of Rome, copies of which were pub- 
lished broadcast, beseeching him to come and establish his 
earthly reign in Mexico. "But if in the decrees of Providence 
the Roman Pontificate were to come to the New World, you, 
Father, would find in Mexico seven millions of your children 
filled with love and veneration toward your holy person." 
These were Herrera's words. It is indeed highly probable 
that the success of her intrigues toward establishing monarchy 
had caused the Church to indulge the hope of going still further 
and instituting a Theocratic power in Mexico. 

Soon after the above appeal had been made to the Pope, the 
Council of Mexico City, ecclesiastical appointees, under the 
chairmanship of Lucas Alaman made the first open move in the 
conspiracy by officially declaring the city to be in favour of a 
monarchy. The declaration caused an unexpected reaction on 
the part of the Liberals; vigorous protests appeared in their 
papers, and street parades were held which ended in riots. The 
affair, however, soon subsided, for the Liberals still suffered 
from the after-effects of the war, and from the loss of a great 
number of their keenest and ablest leaders. The Clericals, on 
the contrary, were in the full tide of their power, a tide they were 
to enjoy unmolested for many years, 



CLERICAL INTRIGUES 169 

Meanwhile, the race war in Yucatan between the Mayas* and 
the Spaniards, to which we have previously referred, had as- 
sumed terrible proportions; while in the north the savage Indian 
tribes were still ravaging the country unchecked. The Clerical 
government, however, was unable to conceive the necessity of 
taking any action not directly concerned with the interests of 
the Church and big land-owners, and made no effort to restore 
order or to defend the people. 

The government was now, as usual, in severe financial straits. 
In order to meet the expenses of the administration and the up- 
keep of the army, a crushing poll-tax and interurban tariff were 
levied upon the people, in spite of the fact that they were already 
mulcted in tithings and rents by the Church. Under these con- 
ditions the people sank into a poverty unequalled in the history 
of civilization. 

With the close of President Herrera's term, General Mariano 
Arista was elected in his place on the 15th of January, 1851. 
The increase of poverty, the vigorous development of the agita- 
tion for a monarchy, and the suppression of the Liberal press, 
were the characteristics of the new regime. The Liberal opposi- 
tion was slow in gathering way after the war with the United 
States. 

During Arista's term, however, some advances were made in 
the provinces where the Clerical vigilance was not so strictly 
maintained as in Mexico City. This was notably the case in 
the State of Oaxaca, where the governor, Benito Juarez, himself 
a Liberal, quietly filled all the positions in his gift with men of 
his own ideas. In the State of Michoacan, the Liberal governor, 



*The Maya race, like all the native races of Mexico, are not Indians or Mon- 
gols, or black men. On the contrary, they belong to the Aryan or Caucasian 
division of the human family, and are ethnologically fully entitled to the popular 
caption of " White Men." It will probably interest many readers who have not 
enjoyed the privilege of travelling in Mexico to know that, if there are whole 
territories where the people are as dark-eyed, dark-skinned, and dark-haired as 
are, for instance, the Welsh, or the Spaniards, or the Basques, there are also 
large territories where the people are as fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and fair-haired 
as are the English, Norse, or the Andalusians. 



170 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Melchor Ocampo, not only succeeded in creating a Liberal ad- 
ministration, but by its aid succeeded in eliminating Clerical 
interference in education and even in taxing ttie Church for the 
support of the public schools. The states of Nuevo Leon 
and Tamaulipas also began to make similar advances. Arista 
possessed neither the courage nor audacity to curb this unosten- 
tatious but menacing activity, and accordingly the Church de- 
creed his overthrow. 

Again the cuartelazo was invoked. In July, 1852, Colonel 
Climaco Rebolledo headed the uprising of the garrison at Cor- 
dova, in the State of Vera Cruz. A few days later Colonel Jose' 
Maria Blancarte joined the movement at the head of the garrison 
at Guadalajara, and compelled the Liberal governor to remove 
to Zapatlanejo. In both of these uprisings proclamations were 
made demanding the discharge of Arista from the presidency, 
while at Michoacan the uprising which took place under Colonel 
Bahamonde demanded not only the discharge of Arista but also 
of Melchor Ocampo, the governor of the state. 

Similar scheduled uprisings followed in all parts of the country. 
Guadalajara was the storm-centre, however. Here a joint 
convention of the chief officers of the army, and high dignitaries 
of the Church announced that President Arista was discharged, 
and that Santa Ana would be immediately recalled from his 
exile in Colombia to become again the President of the Republic. 
Arista needed no second warning but peaceably resigned, Janu- 
ary 6, 1853, and a few days later left the country for the usual 
exile in Europe. 

By virtue of the law the President of the Supreme Court, 
Juan Bautista Cevallos now became President. Cevallos* first 
action was to issue a decree abolishing Congress. It was an 
entirely unreasonable and unjustifiable step even from the Cleri- 
cal point of view; for Congress, since the war with the United 
States, had consisted almost entirely of meek and faithful ser- 
vants of the Church. The institution per se, however, was a 
relic of democratic government, and as such its continued exist- 



CLERICAL INTRIGUES 171 

ence had become incompatible with the monarchial schemes of 
the Church. In this aboHtion the last vestige of the Constitu- 
tion of 1824 disappeared. 

A few days later the President pro tern, resigned, and a caucus 
of military chieftains and prelates, who now posed as the lawful 
representatives of the nation, appointed Juan Manuel Maria 
Lombardini his successor. The same caucus likewise declared 
all previous systems of government and constitutions ineffective, 
and summoned delegates from the various states to a special 
convention to decide upon a new constitution and system of 
government. To the legislatures of the states, however, the 
caucus left the right to elect the President on a basis of one vote 
to each legislature. Accordingly on the 17th of March, 1853, 
the state legislatures, dominated completely by the Church, 
elected Santa Ana, still absent, to his third term as President. 

The methods, the purposes, and ambitions of the Mexican 
ruling class — the Church, Army, and Aristocracy — at this 
period are vividly revealed in the letter of instructions written 
by Lucas Alaman, the "man of the black brains," to the Presi- 
dent-elect, Santa Ana. In this letter, a portion of which we 
append below, the master mind of the Church speaks to the tool 
in words around whose dignity and sombre force there plays the 
irony of an illimitable contempt: 

"It is our will to sustain the ecclesiastical welfare with splen- 
dour and to arrange with the Pope everything relative to the 
ecclesiastical administration. We do not care, as some papers 
have said, in order to discredit us, to establish the Inquisition 
nor religious persecution, but it is understood that the duty of 
the public authority is to prevent the circulation of impious 
books. . . . We are absolutely opposed to the federal sys- 
tem; to the representative system in the matter of elections 
which has obtained hitherto; and the elective city council (mu- 
nicipal home rule) , and to everything which bears any relation 
to popular election. . . . We believe in the necessity of a 



172 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

new territorial division that will entirely extinguish and oblit- 
erate the present form of federal states. In order to facilitate 
good administration we believe it necessary that the most drastic 
measures be taken to prevent the resprouting of the federal sys- 
tem. There will be an army of numbers competent for the needs 
of the country. . . . And we are persuaded that any and 
all of these things can be satisfactorily carried out without Con- 
gress. We desire, however, that you proceed under the counsel 
of a few advisers who will outline your executive action. Those 
are the essential points of our political faith. These we reveal 
to you frankly and loyally. We do not wish to conceal our 
opinions. Indeed in the propagation of these ideas we are sup- 
ported by the general opinion, and by the newspapers in the 
capital and in the states which are all ours. We have the moral 
strength of the united clergy, and likewise of the land- owners 
. . . . For the rest we do not care, no matter what your 
personal convictions may be, to see you surrounded by flat- 
terers who will influence you. . . . We are against your 
going to live in Tacubaya, because this will be a source of incon- 
venience to us in the transaction of the governmental business; 
and we are against your usual leave of absence to go to your estate. 
Manga de Clavo, leaving the government in hands that will 
make the authority to be regarded with ridicule, and ending in 
your downfall, as has happened before. You are already pos- 
sessed of our desires, of the strength and support which is ours, 
and we presume you have the same ideas. If it should happen 
not to prove so, it will be bad for the nation — and you. . . . 
Seiior Haro will give you more detail in regard to these points, 
and, advising you to destroy this letter, and wishing you happi- 
ness, etc., I aflfirm myself to be your faithful and obedient ser- 
vant, Lucas Alaman . ' * 

No very elaborate study of this document is necessary to dis- 
cover in it the whole program of the Clerical party in Mexico, 
and in miniature the. whole program, ol the. master class of the. 



CLERICAL INTRIGUES 173 

world. This dark figure which stirs, silent and stealthy as a 
shadow, behind all the events of the period, this Lucas Alaman, 
was the very genuis of the Clerical party. We have seen him 
directing the policies of the Church, from the conspiracy which 
ended in the overthrow and murder of Guerrero, through the 
Texas question, the abolition of the federal system, the war 
with the United States, and down to this moment when he 
places Santa Ana once more in power, instructing him in the 
desires of the Church as to his personal behaviour, with the cool, 
ironic insolence of the superior mind for its tool. To Alaman, 
more than any other man, is due the power which the Church 
attained in this period, and the impetus of his master mind sus- 
tained her in power years after his death. It may seem surpris- 
ing that such a man should choose Santa Ana for the execution 
of the Clerical policies. There was, however, a reason for the 
choice. Santa Ana possessed the trick of popularity, of effective 
stage acting. He was the only man who knew how to satisfy 
the army's love of lax discipline without permitting it to degen- 
erate into a mob. He was, moreover, a man without a mind or 
soul of his own — an obedient lackey who took the lash or the 
bribe with equally facile servility. Such a man in the hands of 
an Alaman was an exquisite tool for the schemes of the Church. 
) On the 20th of April, 1853, the new President took the oath of 
office, together with the cabinet selected for him by the Church; 
Lucas Alaman, Secretary of State and President of the Cabinet; 
Jose Maria Tornel, Secretary of War; Antonio Haro y Tamaris, 
Treasurer; and Teodosio Lares, Secretary of Justice. 

In accordance with the policy outlined by Lucas Alaman, the 
first act of the new administration was the promulgation of a 
measure dictated by Minister Lares, the Secretary of Justice, 
and hence called " Lares Law," by which every publisher of news- 
papers, books, or pamphlets was compelled to place with the 
government a bond of not less than three thousand dollars to be 
confiscated by the government at discretion for offences against 
the ecclesiastical and civil authority. The law proceeded to da- 



174 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

fine such offences as : Attacks upon the dogmas of the Church, 
or expressions of doubt in regard to her creed; and criticisms, 
however slight, directed against the government, or of its 
oflficers. It likewise established a secret tribunal similar to the 
star-chamber of the Stuart regime in England to deal with viola- 
tions of its provisions. The operation of this measure imme- 
diately suppressed the Liberal newspapers El Monitor, El In- 
structor del Pueblo, El Telegrafo, and Biblioteca Popular Mexicana, 
as well as a number of smaller publications. El Universaly the 
Catholic monarchist organ, on the contrary, greatly increased 
its size and circulation. 

To overawe the Liberals and impress the masses, the adminis- 
tration proceeded to increase the army to the enormous number 
of ninety thousand men. For the support of this idle host, 
in addition to the now vastly increased numbers of friars and 
nuns who battened upon the people, a direct taxation was im- 
posed and enforced with the most brutally coercive measures. 
By fines and imprisonment and seizure of goods, the last centavo 
was wrenched from the hunger-wasted poor in order to sustain 
a ruling class that was indifferent to the needs of the people. 

El Siglo, one of the few newspapers that survived the Lares 
Law, in its issue of the 20th of January, 1852, said: "In the 
capital, according to official information, many corpses have 
been left to be buried by the police, because the families have 
no money wherewith to pay the funeral expenses. This horri- 
ble fact needs no comment. It is a blot upon the morals of any 
Christian civilized country, and energetic preventive measures 
ought to be taken at once by the authorities." Human misery 
such as this mattered little to the Clerical administration. For 
a large standing army and a well-filled exchequer were neces- 
sary not only for the repression of a possible revolt but as a 
reserve weapon for enforcing upon the people, after long years 
of conspiracy, the now rapidly approaching establishment of 
a monarchy. To quote the Catholic historian, Zamacois, 
in this respect: "Don Lucas Alaman, in spite of the change of 



CLERICAL INTRIGUES 175 

government, believed in good faith that the only way of ob- 
taining permanent peace, prosperity, and power for Mexico 
was the establishment of a monarchy with a Spanish prince at 
its head. In this firm conviction he suggested the scheme to 
Santa Ana; the latter assented to the reasons that the minister 
laid before him. . . . From that moment both began to work 
for this end, but with the greatest secrecy . . . and in order 
to carry out their purpose they agreed to seek the intervention 
of England, France, and Spain." (Zamacois, "Historia de 
Mejico," Vol. 13, p. 672.) Thus the armed forces of England, 
France, and Spain were to be invoked to support the Church 
and the enormous Mexican army in the task of imposing a for- 
eign monarch on the people — this in the name of peace and 
prosperity ! 

In close pursuit of his object, Alaman dispatched official 
instructions to Don Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and private 
ones to Don Jose Manuel Hidalgo, Secretary of the Mexican 
legation at Madrid, to press forward the negotiations with the 
Count de San Luis, president of the Spanish cabinet, for the 
accession of a Spanish prince to the throne of Mexico, and at 
the same time to engage the interest and cooperation of England 
and France in the matter. In order further to facilitate the 
negotiations, the conspirators even endeavoured to bring Mexico 
under a Spanish protectorate. 

The people in Mexico were in complete ignorance of the con- 
spiracy, for all of the negotiations had been carried out in the 
darkest secrecy; while the rigid censorship of the Lares Law 
effectually suppressed any news that might have leaked out. 
In the month of July, 1854, however. El Clamor Publico, a 
Spanish Liberal newspaper, published in Spain and widely read 
among Mexican Liberals, proclaimed and denounced the whole 
conspiracy in an editorial, concluding with these words: "For 
Mexico to look for the end of the wrongs with which she is 
afflicted in the protectorate of Spain, whose strength is ex- 
hausted, or in a monarchy, a name which only awakens there 



176 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

the remembrance of infinite disasters, is an erroneous adven- 
ture, if not a punishable project." 

The revelation aroused keen surprise and fierce indignation 
not only among the Liberals in Mexico, but among the Liberals 
in Spain also. This incident, coupled with the sudden death of 
Count de San Luis, caused the collapse of this particular phase 
of the monarchical intrigue, not, however, of the intrigue itself. 
During the negotiations, it is interesting to note, the astute 
Spanish premier had succeeded in extorting from the Mexican 
administration the recognition of several claims lodged by 
Spain against Mexico. One of these was, absurdly enough, an 
indemnification for the funds expended by Spain in fighting 
the insurgency at the time of the Revolution for Independence; 
another, equally absurd, was lodged in the name of a Spanish 
priest, Jose Moran, for reimbursement for estates occupied by 
the Mexican Government which had been set aside by Spain 
for the support of missions in the Philippines and California. 

In the first claim Mexico, now independent, was asked to pay 
the expenses of an army against her independence; in the sec- 
ond she was asked to reimburse the Church in Spain for lands 
necessarily sequestrated by the Independence which, moreover, 
were intended for the support of the missions in California, 
now annexed to the United States, and in the Philippines, 
which were merely another Spanish possession having no rela- 
tion whatever to Mexico. The two claims amounted to over 
eight million dollars, and notwithstanding the financial exhaus- 
tion of the country, and the enormous army appropriations, 
they were both duly recognized by Alaman, Santa Ana, and 
their confederates in the hope of hastening the arrival of a 
Spanish prince at Mexico City. These claims, together with a 
number of others equally disreputable, constitute to this day a 
part of the enormous Mexican national debt. 

In the midst of these infamies Lucas Alaman died on the 29th 
of May, 1853. The "man of the black brains," the only intel- 
lect in the Church capable of dealing with the situation, was 



CLERICAL INTRIGUES 177 

gone, but the impulse he had given to the Clerical policies 
still continued to be felt. The suppression of the city councils, 
the imposition of an interurban tariff on the transfer of produce 
from one locality to another — a measure of bitter cruelty in a 
starving country — and the iniquitous Lares Law had been 
the outstanding features of his home policy. What his foreign 
policy had been we have already seen. 

Subsequent to his death his influence still appeared in the terri- 
ble Ley de conspiradores (Law of conspirators) , a measure prom- 
ulgated by the Clerical administration, which decreed that any 
one convicted or suspected of uttering opinions adverse to the 
Church or government should be arrested and tried without 
jury or civil procedure before the local military commander or 
nearest army oflicer; and, after a summary investigation of the 
facts, punished with death or imprisonment at the discretion of 
the military court. Under this law, which exaggerated the worst 
effects of the Inquisition, thousands of innocent victims were 
done to death for merely holding Liberal opinions. Not only 
men, but women and even children as well. 

In contrast to this starvation, slavery, and strangulation of 
the people, the ecclesiastics, government oflicials, military, and 
aristocracy openly flaunted their luxury and license. Cholera 
had come to scourge the land from end to end, rendering 
conditions still more appalling; while in the national palace 
Santa Ana smiHngly cast up his latest receipts — like a Porfirio 
Diaz after him — from the sale of thousands of Maya natives 
to the planters of Cuba ! 

It will be remembered that in Alaman's letter of instructions 
to Santa Ana he made express mention of a "few advisers" who 
would direct the President's executive action. This Supreme 
Council of State, organized and led by Alaman, consisted of 
twenty-one high prelates, aristocrats, and generals, who were 
directly responsible for all the acts of the government. Those 
men, encouraged by the success of their past efforts, now entered 
upon the penultimate step in the monarchical conspiracy, by 



178 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

promulgating a law which gave President Santa Ana the official 
title of President Dictator. This law also extended his term of 
office indefinitely, placed in his hands the right to appoint a 
successor, and endowed him with authority to assume the ad- 
dress of "Most Serene Highness ! " 

The next step, of course, would have been the last — the armed 
intervention of the European powers in favour of a monarchy, 
the abdication of Santa Ana, and the enthronement of a foreign 
prince with despotic power s . For this consummation the Church 
had laboured long and assiduously. It was a climax, however, 
destined to be fulfilled only after years of bloodshed. Scarcely 
had she promulgated this edict so fraught with sinister signifi- 
cance than she was startled from her dream of unlimited, un- 
broken power by the distant rumblings of a revolution. Nemesis 
was at hand. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 

THE premonitory symptoms of a new revolution in Mexico 
appeared in 1854 in the form of a series of local uprisings as 
sporadic and spontaneous as they were indefinite in character. 
Blended with them in confusing fashion were several purely 
military uprisings headed by disgruntled army officers — mere 
accidents in the general process. It was in Guerrero that the 
Revolution first arose in a nebulous condition and later assumed 
full shape, mass, and momentum. Here it was moulded and 
guided by Juan Alvarez, that same Juan Alvarez who had fought 
shoulder to shoulder with Guerrero in his last stand against the 
forces of oppression. The insurgent masses of the south instinc- 
tively turned for leadership to this gray -bearded patriot who had 
fought for them, lived for them, and was prepared to die for 
them — Tio (uncle) Juan Alvarez as they called him. 

Together with Ignacio Comonfort, a customs inspector in 
Acapulco, Tomas Moreno, an old insurgent comrade of Morelos, 
Diego Alvarez, Eligio Romero, and others, Juan Alvarez drew 
up and published a platform outlining the purpose and policy of 
the Revolution. This platform, famous in history as the Plan 
de Ayutla,was proclaimed March 1, 1854, in the town of Ayutla, 
in the State of Guerrero. Its main provisions read as follows : 

I. The President Dictator, Santa Ana, is hereby discharged 
from power, together with all the officers of the government who 
are undeserving the confidence of the people. 

II. In the adoption of this plan by the majority of the 

179 



180 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

nation, the commander-in-cliief of the revolutionary forces 
will call a delegate from each state and territory to meet in a 
certain place on a certain day to be chosen at a later time, to 
elect an interim President of the Republic, and to work as his 
advisers. 

III. In each of the states the chief commander of the revolu- 
tionary forces will choose seven persons to frame the provision- 
ary statutes, to rule the said state or territory upon the basis that 
the nation is, and will be, one, indivisible, and independent. 

IV. Fifteen days after the taking of power by the interim 
President he will call for the election of an extraordinary Con- 
gress, said election to be held according to the law given to that 
effect in the year 1841. The said Congress will work exclusively 
to constitute the nation under the form of a representative popu- 
lar Republic, and to revise the acts of the provisional President. 

V. The laws in regard to the organization of the army and 
individual taxation and the interurban tariff are hereby declared 
null and void. 

Terrified and spurred to swift action by the promulgation of 
this platform, the Clerical administration dispatched punitive 
expeditions to Guerrero, to Oaxaca, and later to Acapulco, 
where Ignacio Comonfort was in command of a strong force 
of revolutionists. In every encounter, however, these expedi- 
tions were defeated. Thereupon Santa Ana, with characteris- 
tic egoism, undertook "to scatter the sacrilegious enemies of the 
Lord," and left Mexico City for the south at the head of five 
thousand men amid the utmost pomp and splendour. The 
revolutionists intercepted his march at El Puerto de Coquillo, 
delivering a sharp attack, and then retired in skirmishing order 
on Acapulco, where Comonfort, with a handful of six hundred 
men, was well entrenched — tactics which proved trying enough 
to the government forces already exhausted with much march- 
ing and suffering from the effects of heat and thirst. 

After three or four ill-managed and disastrous assaults on 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 181 

the city, Santa Ana abandoned the attempt to carry it by storm, 
and resorted to strategy, offering a bribe of a hundred thousand 
dollars and a highly desirable appointment in the European 
diplomatic corps to Comonfort, together with good positions 
in the army for the rest of the revolutionists. Needless to say 
these overtures were repulsed with scorn. Santa Ana there- 
upon raised the siege and countermarched to the capital, vent- 
ing his rage and spleen by shooting every peon he could lay 
hands upon, and burning and sacking the towns and villages 
through which he passed on the pretext of destroying the sup- 
port of the revolutionists. 

Meanwhile, true to his usual practices, he dispatched grand- 
iloquent messages to Mexico City and all parts of the country, 
proclaiming that he had utterly crushed the revolution and won 
another glorious victory over the enemies of God. The revolu- 
tionists, by reason of their small numbers and lack of ammuni- 
tion, were compelled to refrain from pursuit, and Comonfort, 
in view of this, left Acapulco for the United States to obtain 
the war equipment necessary for the further conduct of the 
campaign. 

When Santa Ana arrived in Mexico City the Clerical party, 
realizing the seriousness of the occasion, and determined to 
dupe the populace to the last, welcomed him with grandiose 
festivities on a scale never before witnessed. To further con- 
fuse the people and add an appearance of popularity to their 
regime they ordered a national plebiscite to be made on the 
following questions : 

First : Shall the President continue to possess the dictatorial 
powers which he is exercising to-day? Second: If he be not 
authorized to continue the exercise of said powers to whom 
shall he delegate them.^^ 

The transparent absurdity of these questions could have de- 
ceived no one, but thousands of ecclesiastical, military, and 
official retainers throughout the country worked assiduously 
to obtain favourable signatures to them. In view of the fact 



182 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

that more than 80 per cent, of the population were unable 
either to read or write, and must make their signatures through 
government proxies, and that all those refusing to give uncon- 
ditional and immediate assent to the first question were sum- 
marily imprisoned, exiled, and bereft of their property or exe- 
cuted, it is easy to see the exact value of the plebiscite. In this 
respect the following document from the minister of war is 
illuminating: 

"Excellent Sir: With surprise and indignation His Most 
Serene Highness has seen that some individuals, boasting an- 
archistic ideas, and insulting with bold impudence the Supreme 
Authority of the nation, have dared to vote for President of 
the Republic in the elections of the 1st and 3d instant in favour 
of that leader of marauders, Juan Alvarez. In consequence. His 
Most Serene Highness has ordered that those who have voted 
in this way be arrested and adjudged according to the Ley de 
Conspir adores, for by this fact they have shown that they are 
in sympathy with the rebellion. God and Liberty. Mexico, 
December 11, 1854. Blanco, Minister of War, to His Excel- 
lency, the General Commander of the Army in San Luis Potosi.'* 

Closely following this plebiscite the terror of the Church in 
face of the avenger found expression in a decree promulgated 
by the Supreme Council of State amplifying the horrors of the 
Ley de Conspiradores. According to its terms, "not only were 
individuals to be punished for expressing an opinion against the 
Government, but the towns in which these rebels were living were to 
be destroyed by fire and their inhabitants to be shM in groups.'^ 
("Mexico, a traves de los Siglos," Vol. 4, p. 850.) 

Meanwhile the Revolution, so far from succumbing to the 
oppressive measures of the Clerical party, burst forth with 
renewed energy in all parts of the country — in Huanustitlan, 
Marcial Caamano; in the State of Jalisco, Santos DegoUado 
and Epitacio Huerta took the field at the head of large bodies of 
peons in favour of the Plan de Ayutla; while the states of More- 
los, Mexico, Michoacan, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo Leon wit- 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 183 

nessed great spontaneous uprisings, almost leaderless, and in 
many cases devoid of definite program. 

According to one authority, "The Revolution of Ayutla, like 
all other revolutions in Mexico, was a really popular revolt, 
and as such there was a lack of leaders and direction to organ- 
ize it in the different places where it broke out. The oppressed, 
tyrannized by the long dominion of the privileged class and con- 
servatives, were eager to shake off the yoke that they had 
borne for so many years, and when the extreme measures of 
repression adopted by the government caused the south to 
burst forth in revolt, all these oppressed and downtrodden 
seconded the movement spontaneously by an irresistible im- 
pulse toward liberty. Indeed so spontaneous was the revolt of 
the people that the majority of these men joined the uprising 
without knowing the principles of the Plan de Ayutla, and only 
because they were told that they were to fight for Liberal prin- 
ciples.'* ("Mexico a traves de los Siglos," Vol. 4, p. 856.) 

We have seen one of the twin dominant characteristics of the 
Church — Fear — impelling her to fan the flames of revolution 
by repressive measures of hysterical cruelty and absurdity; we 
have now to see the companion characteristic — Greed — im- 
pelling her to refuse financial support to the only bulwark which 
lay between her and destruction — Santa Ana and his army. 
With the larger part of the country in revolt, the usual sources 
of revenue — the poll-tax and theinterurban tariffs — destroyed, 
Santa Ana was obliged to turn to the Church and great land- 
owners for the funds necessary to the maintenance of the army 
and the conduct of the campaign. In the matter of taxation, 
the unchanging theory of the Church, as of every ruling caste or 
class, is: that since the common people cannot be trusted to 
submit peaceably to exploitation, save under the pressure of 
government and an army, the common people themselves must 
support that government and army. Hence any deviation in 
practice from this principle sorely disturbs the oppressor. 

Accordingly when Santa An§i began to ply the Church with 



184 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

requests for money she turned upon him with the most scathing 
censures and denunciations for his lack of ability in failing 
to crush the popular revolt without funds. Meanwhile some 
minor successes of the army encouraged her to promulgate 
through the medium of the Supreme Council of State further 
decrees against the revolutionists, ordering the indiscriminate 
destruction of the life and property of all those even suspected 
of opposition to the government. One of these ordered "all 
rebel towns to be destroyed, and all who are in any way hostile 
to the national army to be shot at once." Another, amplifying 
the above, ordered "all rebels or suspected rebels to be shot, 
and to be hanged from the branches of the trees by the roadside, 
and the villages and rancherias (dwellings of the peons), and their 
food, cattle, and other means of subsistence to be utterly de- 
stroyed." ("Historia de la Revolucion en Mexico en contra de 
la dictadura de Santa Ana, 1853 to 1855.") 

As might be expected, the more exasperated and hysterical 
the repression the stronger and fiercer the revolt. The least 
vigorous and courageous peon seeing before him certain death 
as a suspect, if he submitted, chose rather to fight for possible 
life and freedom. By the month of May, 1855, the states of 
Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas and Coahuila were in full control 
of the revolutionists, and the revolutionary government pro- 
vided for by the Plan de Ayutla was well established. Santa 
Ana seemed by no means eager to achieve another of his "glori- 
ous victories," and it was not until the prelates of the powerful 
Clerical State of Michoacan urgently summoned him to their 
aid that he consented to leave the safety of Mexico City for the 
hazards of the field. As usual, his military operations consisted 
only of a showy parade. After recommending the officers in 
charge of the garrisons in Michoacan to exercise the utmost 
severity against the rebels he returned to the capital without 
striking a blow. 

It was the first time that Santa Ana had been called upon to 
engage in a real struggle and to face a situation not already 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 185 

"arranged" for him. His rank cowardice and incompetency 
now revealed itself to the fullest extent, and the Church, dis- 
gusted with his failures and enraged at his financial exactions, 
pronounced his overthrow. Santa Ana sensed the coming storm 
and fled, leaving behind him a communication to be opened on a 
given date, which reads : 

"I. The President of the Republic having been given ample 
faculties by the nation to appoint a successor to his office in the 
event of his resignation, hereby appoints as executive power the 
President of the Supreme Court and the Generals Mariano Salas 
and Martin Carrera. If some of these generals die their places 
may be filled by General Romulo Diaz de la Vega and Ignacio 
Mora y Villamil. 

" II. These men will come into power if the actual President 
dies, or if he makes declaration signed by himself of his inability 
to continue the exercise of the supreme power for any cause that 
he may deem sufficient. As soon as this executive power as- 
sumes the functions of office, its main activity must be the 
keeping of order, and the calling of the nation to frame a 
constitution." 

Before leaving he bid his personal followers to pay no heed to 
the rumours already current that he was about to leave the coun- 
try, announcing to them that the activities of the revolutionists 
in Puebla and in the State of Vera Cruz necessitated his per- 
sonal supervision of the defence in those parts. On the 18th of 
August, 1855, Santa Ana left Mexico City forever, to die an exile 
and a forgotten man. 

We now come to a very decisive turning point in the history 
of Mexico's struggle for democracy. Hitherto, in the ruling 
class trinity — Church, Army, and Aristocracy — the Church 
has been all-powerful, using the Army and Aristocracy purely 
for the furtherance of her own interests. Hitherto there has 
been but one policy, the Clerical policy,' to which all others have 
been compelled to accommodate themselves. Henceforward 



186 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

we are to witness the diversion of the Army and Aristocratic 
policy from the Clerical policy, accompanied by the decline and 
fall of the power of the Church, and the rise and consolidation 
of the power of the Army and Aristocracy of big land-owners. 
In short, we have come to the point which divides old Mexico 
from modern Mexico. 

For this change there were a number of reasons, chief among 
which were: The complete loss of prestige sustained by the 
Church among the more intelligent section of the nation, the dis- 
proportionate numerical strength and, therefore, political power 
of the Army, and more important than this, the first faint be- 
ginnings of the industrial era in Mexico. The organizer of in- 
dustry and the industrial wage-slave alike, trained unconsciously 
to a scientific mode of thought by the necessities of their respec- 
tive tasks, are prone to carry the reason and logic of the counting 
house and the workshop into other departments of life with dis- 
astrous results to their faith in the dogmas of the Church; or, 
indeed, in the tenets of any organized religious sect or ethical 
cult. From its very inception, the era of industry, with its 
well-marked materialism, has not only immensely improved the 
power of man over his material environment, but has gone far 
to destroy the suffocating emanations of the past; it has not 
only prepared the way for a collectivist organization of society, 
but it has made straight the path for a new spirituality in 
society. This great change which had already begun to sweep 
over all the civilized world could not long escape Mexico, and it 
is in this year of 1855 that the first faint indications of its influ- 
ence are to be detected. 

The immediate impulse, however, which led to the sever- 
ance of the Clerical and military policies was the effort of the 
Army to shelter from the coming storm. The Church begrudged 
it the necessary support; the national character of the Revolu- 
tion had already abolished its customary revenues; it, therefore, 
had but one safe course to pursue — to execute a nimble volte- 
face and compromise with the Revolution in the secret inten- 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 187 

tion of perverting it to the furtherance of its own interests at 
the first opportunity. Accordingly General Diaz de la Vega, 
acting independently of the Church, called a convention of the lead- 
ing citizens of the capital and the states to elect a President. 
This self-appointed assembly, without consulting the revolu- 
tionists on the one hand, or the Church on the other, elected 
General Martin Carrera to the presidency, and declared for the 
Plan de Ayutla. In addition to this main movement of the 
Army and Aristocracy there were two smaller counter-move- 
ments, one representing the recalcitrant element in the Army, 
who clung to all the old traditions and refused to compromise, 
and the other inspired solely by the personal ambition of An- 
tonio Haro y Tamariz, the confidant of the late Lucas Alaman. 
Conciliatory measures are invariably disastrous in a revolu- 
tionary state of society. But President Carrera, true to the 
new policy, established his regime with a number of measures 
intended to appease and reconcile the revolutionists. The 
most important of these was a measure creating a national 
guard on the same principle and footing as the old bodies 
of civicos. As opposed to the regular army, the chief weapon 
of class oppression, the civicos, as we have seen, were a free 
citizen militia, the very bulwark of the Liberal party and the 
rights of the people. This organization of the national guard, 
therefore, was a subject well calculated to make an inroad into 
the ranks of the revolutionists. Other seductive measures 
followed. On the 20th of August, 1855, a nation-wide summons 
was issued by President Carrera, under the provisions of the 
already adopted Plan de Ayutla, for the election of representa- 
tives to Congress for the purpose of framing a new constitution. 
Thus, almost miraculously it seemed, the aspirations of the 
people were to be realized — aspirations cherished with growing 
ardour since the clerico-military cuartelazo which overthrew 
the Constitution of 1824. At the same time all political pris- 
oners were liberated, and those in exile were permitted to re- 
turn to the country. These measures were, of course, purely 



188 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

diplomatic, dictated not by principle but by motives of fear 
and self-interest. The revolutionary host was advancing on 
Mexico City, and the Army, having made these dispositions, 
awaited the turn of events before deciding whether to realign 
with the Church, or oppose her; to rend the Revolution, or to 
embrace it, work with it, and ultimately capture and betray it. 
"It was clearly seen when the triumph of the Revolution 
was proclaimed in the capital of the Republic that those who 
proclaimed this triumph were trying to impress upon its course 
a direction utterly at variance with its spirit. The Conserva- 
tive reaction during the Santa Ana dictatorship had displayed 
a superabundance of despotism and arbitrariness which incited 
the people, embittered by recent experience, to demand such 
radical measures as would destroy root and branch the old 
wrongs, in which, as by a band of iron, Mexico had been bound 
for years. All hope for conciliation between the Conservatives 
and the Liberal party was entirely out of the question; a chasm 
of hatred separated them, and there could be no other outcome 
but that of a fight to the death between these two political 
parties which, holding opposite principles, must needs come to 
contradictory results. . . . No matter what may have been 
the qualities and personal credit of General Diaz de la Vega and 
President Carrera, the truth is that both were leading members 
of the last dictatorship, and that they were appointed by Santa 
Ana to take the executive power. This alone was enough for 
the people to refuse all confidence in them. The Plan de Ayutla 
proclaimed by the garrison in Mexico City had been changed 
by them in an essential point in making General Diaz de la 
Vega chief of the Revolution instead of Tio (uncle) Juan Alvarez 
as declared in the original plan. In other words, by some dex- 
terous conjuring the same man who the day before had been 
strenuously combating the revolutionary movement which had 
overthrown the dictatorship, was now chief and leader of this 
very movement; while its authors and supporters, those who 
had gone to the fight defying the wrath of the government, were 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 189 

dropped to a second place." ("Mexico, a traves de los Siglos," 
Vol. 5, p. 59.) 

Meanwhile the states of Jalisco, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, 
Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, together with the states 
of the northwest had fallen completely under the control of the 
revolutionists. Already provisional decrees had been promul- 
gated by the revolutionary juntas in the various states, branding 
all the members of the Santa Ana government as enemies of the 
nation, suppressing the Army, abolishing individual taxation, 
and forbidding all exaggerated titles, as, for instance, "His 
Excellency," "His Most Serene Highness," etc. It was under 
these circumstances that, according to the original purpose of the 
Plan de Ayutla, the revolutionists convened at Cuernavaca, 
and after the representatives of the different states had been 
appointed, proceeded to elect Tio Juan Alvarez, President, 
with Melchor Ocampo, that recalcitrant Liberal Governor of 
Michoacan, Secretary of State; Benito Juarez, Secretary of 
Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs; Guillermo Prieto, Treasurer; 
Ponciano Arriaga, Secretary of Interior, and Ignacio Comonfort, 
Secretary of War. At the same time President Carrera, unable 
longer to sustain his false position, resigned, and General Diaz 
de la Vega took military command of Mexico City pending the 
arrival of the revolutionary leaders. A little later Juan Al- 
varez at the head of his army entered the capital unopposed. 

The first act of the revolutionary government was to suppress 
the poll-tax which had been levied upon the people by the late 
administration for the support of the army; the next, to stop 
further payment of the unjustifiable claims allowed by Lucas 
Alaman in favour of the Spanish Government and Father Moran. 
These preliminary acts were followed by a decree authorizing 
the organization of the national guard or bodies of civicos, and 
by a comprehensive measure abolishing the Clerical and military 
fueros, drawn up by Benito Juarez, the Secretary of Justice and 
Ecclesiastical Affairs, and known as the Ley de Juarez. 

The fueros not only exempted members of the Church and 



190 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Army from the jurisdiction of the civil courts but also compelled 
a citizen having a claim against a member of the Church or Army, 
or a citizen accused by a member of the Church or Army, to 
submit to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical or military special 
courts — a state of affairs which made an utter mockery of the 
civil law. The fueros, indeed, constituted a positive expres- 
sion of that brutal and cynical despotism to which the Mexican 
people had been so long subjected, and the Ley de Juarez in 
abolishing them struck at the very heart of the old system of 
oppression and injustice. It showed clearly to the forces of 
privilege the spirit of the Ayutla Revolution. The abolition of 
the military fueros, coupled with the organization of the civicos, 
pointed inevitably to the final suppression of the Army; and 
undoubtedly this was intended. "The Conservative party," 
says Baz, "and the moderate faction were immensely scandal- 
ized by this law; and tlfe belief that the Army was to be sup- 
pressed was the cause of violent opposition against the govern- 
ment." (Gustavo Baz, " Vida de Juarez," p. 96.) 

In addition to these measures the complete freedom of speech 
and press was established, and the Liberal papers, long forced 
into silence, made vigorous use of their opportunity, attacking 
the forces of Privilege with the pent-up wrath of years, and hold- 
ing up before the people the great principles upon which the new 
order was founded. These attacks seemed to the Church and 
Army the very death-knell of their power. They now saw 
clearly that nothing short of extermination awaited them at 
the hands of the people. Once more, therefore, if only for a 
brief period, they determined to join hands and make a united 
effort to overthrow the new order and reestablish the old. 

President Alvarez was an old man, worn out by his long life- 
battle for liberty, and when once he had witnessed the firm 
establishment of the revolutionary government he resigned, leav- 
ing to stronger hands and younger minds the completion of the 
task he had so well begun. In his speech of resignation he said: 
"A poor man, I was made President, and I resign this high posi- 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 191 

tion with the satisfaction of having done something for the 
people. Trained to hard labour since my childhood, I go back 
to handle the plough for the support of my family. I have not 
received one penny from my public position, and I trust that 
none who occupy it hereafter will use it to gain the riches that 
are an outrage to the misery of the people." 

At this moment there came into prominence as the choice of 
the people for President one of the most tragic characters in 
Mexican history, Ignacio Comonfort. A member of the official 
class, as we have seen, Comonfort had forsaken a lucrative 
government position to embrace the cause of the people, and had 
played a part in the Revolution second only to that of Juan 
Alvarez himself. But from the moment he became President 
he began to exhibit a tendency toward the use of conciliatory 
methods in dealing with the enemies of the popular government 
— a policy at once dangerous and unjustifiable. There is no 
possible reconciliation between the wolf and the sheep, between 
the master and the slave, between autocracy and democracy. 
Between them there can exist only a war to the death. In that 
struggle between the two classes which had faced each other 
through three hundred years of the most bitter hostility, there 
was no room for conciliation or concession. The very heart of 
the people was at stake. The hour needed not a Comonfort, 
but a Cromwell, a Spartacus. On the one side, the Church, 
Army, and Aristocracy stubbornly refused to relinquish the 
least of their privileges and plunder; on the other side, the people 
all flushed with victory, exulting in their new liberty, were in no 
mood to temporize with the destroyers of their families, their 
homes, and their freedom. Such leaders as Comonfort, loving 
the new, yet still clinging to the old, doing much good work, 
and yet spoiling with doubtful tactics and compromising atti- 
tudes the final issues of the fighting masses, are spawned by all 
popular revolutions and constitute the gravest, because the most 
subtle, menace to their success. 

Under this uncertain leadership the national situation be- 



192 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

came highly critical, providing, indeed, a favourable milieu for 
the natural and inevitable reaction of the Conservative forces. 
Throughout the country the Clergy were assiduously plotting 
and endeavouring to terrorize the superstitious masses into re- 
linquishing their gains. The revolutionary cabinet against 
Comonfort's wish answered these pernicious activities with a 
law disfranchising the clergy altogether. 

• "By the clamour that was raised everywhere," says the Cath- 
olic historian, "in disapprobation of these measures it was 
easy to see that a revolt was brewing amongst the clerical, 
military, and official classes of society, and that the enemies of 
the government were taking full advantage of the discontent 
that was produced in order to work actively in secret for its 
overthrow. The laws attacking the ecclesiastical fueros met 
with the disapproval of the great part of society * and with 
the protest oi the bishops. The Catholics saw in these laws 
the beginning of sweeping legislation against their religion. 
Their foundation for believing this was the knowledge they had 
of the advanced ideas of the members of the cabinet." (Zama- 
cois, "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 14, p. 128.) 

The conspiracy of the Church and Army against the govern- 
ment now arising in all parts of the country was headed by 
the bishops of San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, and Puebla. 
Its most prominent and mischievous exponent, however, was 
Father Francisco Xavier Miranda, a man of remarkable activity 
and intelligence, and the confessor of Comonfort's mother. 

In this last fact lies in great part the secret of the President's 
disastrously vacillating policy. Comonfort's mother — a fan- 
atically devout Catholic — was continually subjected by the 
wily Jesuit to the extreme of spiritual anguish by reason of her 
son's antagonism to the Church. To Comonfort, a man of 



*"The great part of society" — this statement is an error into which a Catholic 
historian might easily fall. The Revolution of Ayutla expressed the will of not 
less than 80 per cent, of the entire population of Mexico, at that time a popu- 
lation almost entirely Catholic. The ecclesiastical fueros indeed foimd bitter 
opposition in the ranks of Catholic citizens and extreme Jacobins alike. 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 193 

Liberal principles, warm-hearted and sensitive, called upon by 
his country and his own judgment to use the utmost severity 
against the Church, and who at the same time loved his mother 
with a devotion almost idolatrous, this insiduous attack proved 
utterly demoralizing. Too late he summoned courage to have 
Father Miranda and some of his co-conspirators arrested. 
The evil had been done. His action only provoked the open 
revolt of the Church, and the President, endeavouring to palli- 
ate his action and appease the suffering of his mother, appointed 
the bitterly anti-clerical Juarez as governor of Oaxaca to keep 
him out of the cabinet. 

Throughout the country the reaction raged furiously. Every- 
where the clergy denounced the Liberal government as the en- 
emy of God, and openly called upon the people to disobey its 
laws. "The pulpits were converted into political platforms 
whence were hurled the most furious invectives against the 
Liberal party, misrepresenting its policies and denouncing it as 
the most ferocious enemy of the Church and her ministers. 
The Conservative papers also repeated in various ways the 
same accusations, writing long articles to prove the divinity 
of the Catholic religion, and placing in circulation all kinds of 
rumours, no matter how absurd they might be, in order to over- 
throw the authorities, and to stop the current of reform ini- 
tiated in the laws." ("Mexico, a traves de los Siglos,'* Vol. 5, 
p. 88.) 

On the other hand, according to Baz, "The policy of Comon- 
fort was not only an obstacle to the reforms advocated by the 
Liberal party which the time had come to sanction, but failed 
to satisfy either soldiery or Clergy. The first accustomed to 
absolute immunity, and the second accustomed to unlimited 
dominion, were not long in discovering that the Ley de Juarez 
was depriving them of the desirable privileges they had hitherto 
enjoyed; and to retain them they were prepared to plunge the 
country in civil strife. ... If for the Liberal party this 
struggle was a question of principles it was not so for the retro- 



194 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

grade faction. The bishops, the curates, and the friars were 
opposed to these reforms because they were opposed to the loss 
of their influence upon the masses, and of their omnipotent 
power upon the conscience of the people. The soldiery were 
opposed to these reforms because they recognized that the 
law of the sword, brutal force, and the tinsel of military glory 
are absurdities in a Republic where the civil rights are the 
foundation of the law." (Gustavo Baz, "Vida de Juarez," 
p. 97.)^ 

During the month of January, 1856, the revolt broke out in 
full force. The garrisons of Morelia, Michoacan, Queretaro, 
San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, and San Juan de Ulua started 
cuartelazos with the war-cry: "Religion and Fueros," while in 
Oaxaca, the curates, Carlos Parro, Jose Gabriel Castellanos, 
and Jose Maria Garcia, together with Capt. Bonifacio Blanco, 
headed a military uprising proclaiming the full reestablishment 
of the ecclesiastical and military fueros, and the upholding of 
the Catholic religion to the exclusion of all others. In Jalisco 
the friars of the monastery of El Carmen joined with the 
soldiery in a military revolt; at the same time government 
troops which had been dispatched against the cuartelazo at 
San Juan de Ulua mutinied, joined the rebels, and marched with 
them to Puebla which they besieged and finally captured after 
a six days' battle with the national guard. 

Leaving the governors of the states to deal with the more dis- 
tant and less important cuartelazos. President Comonfort gath- 
ered an army consisting of twelve thousand civicos and a 
loyal remnant of the regular army and marched on Puebla. 
In the fourteen days of continuous and desperate fighting which 
ensued, both sides suffered severely; finally, however, the gov- 
ernment forces carried the town, and the mutineers surren- 
dered. 

In the midst of this national turmoil, on the 18th of February, 
1856, the Plan de Ayutla reached its triumphant climax in the 
convening of th^ constitutional Congress. At the same timQ 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 195 

Comonf ort issued a decree mildly punishing the Clerical leaders 
in the recent revolt, couched in the following terms : 

"Article I. The governors of the states of Puebla and Vera 
Cruz and of the territories of Tlaxcala will seize in the name of 
the national government the ecclesiastical property of the dio- 
cese of Puebla. 

"Article II. With a part of said property, and without interfer- 
ing with religious worship, and necessary expenses, the Republic 
will be indemnified for the funds expended in the suppres- 
sion of the reaction which ended in said city; an indemnity will 
be paid also to the inhabitants of the said city for the damages 
that they have suffered during the conflict, and pensions will be 
assigned to the widows, orphans, and those disabled as the 
result of this conflict. 

"Article III. The seizure of the above-mentioned property 
will continue until peace and order has been established in the 
Republic." 

The soldiers who deserted the government to join the cuartel- 
azo received a short term of imprisonment in place of the death 
sentence which they had incurred under the law. In these gentle 
measures Comonf ort undoubtedly was influenced not only by his 
mother's wishes but by the hope that a policy of liberality and 
mercy would appeal to the better nature of his opponents and 
bring to weary, blood-stained Mexico a period of peace and good 
will. 

Like the idealists of all ages, notably of to-day, he refused to 
recognize the impassable, unbridgeable gulf which yawns between 
the two contending classes in society, the exploiting and the 
exploited. He fell short of the fundamental good sense of the 
French Revolutionists, of Cromwell and Spartacus, and like 
another Hamlet he dallied with a distasteful duty, until the sin 
of omission became a bloody, monstrous crime of commission, 
and he fell, dragging with him the high hopes of a nation. This 



196 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

policy of reconciliation, although it was effective in arousing the 
bitter discontent of the Liberals, utterly failed to placate the 
enemy. The Church, indeed, boldly redoubled her efforts to 
arouse the people against the government, and every pulpit in 
the land became a centre of sedition and treason. The Bishop 
of Puebla, unperturbed by the castigation his diocese had re- 
cently received for its support of the cuartelazo of Miranda, 
openly continued to preach revolt in the cathedral and to bid 
his priests and curates to do likewise. 

Meanwhile Congress was engaged in framing the most brilliant 
constitution that democracy has yet achieved — the Constitu- 
tion of 1857 — and in passing measures embodying the deepest 
aspirations of the people. Amid storms of protest from the 
opposition, and oftentimes amid the howling mobs gathered 
by the clergy and marshalled to the House for the purpose of 
obstructing the work of the Liberals, principle upon principle 
was enunciated and established abolishing the bulwarks of privi- 
lege, and upholding the social, poUtical, and economic equality 
of men. 

Among the first of these were the abolition of the ecclesiastical 
and military fueros, the cancelling of all military appointments 
made by Santa Ana, and the suppression of the Jesuits. Against 
this bold enunciation of Mexico's future laws President Comon- 
fort struggled with but little effect, save to anger the Liberals, 
disgrace himself in the eyes of the people, and weaken his prestige 
with the opposition. He succeeded indeed in modifying several 
measures for the establishment of religious freedom, but in spite 
of these misguided efforts at obstruction Congress continued to 
pursue with vigour its great task of realizing the hopes of the 
nation. 

The one outstanding achievement of President Comonfort's 
policy of reconciliation, however, was a measure initiated, fos- 
tered, and finally forced through Congress under his influence, 
which effectually forestalled the efforts of the people to confis- 
cate the estates of the Church, by providing that these estates 




THE NATIONAL PALACE 



The National Capitol of Mexico and the centre of the stage in the great drama 
of human rights that has been going on in that country for so many years 




CONSTITUTIONALISTS AND THEIR FAMILIES 

"Never for a moment since Diaz came into power in 1876 had the spirit of 

revolt ceased to fire the hearts of the people" (See page 341) 



1^*^- 




Photograph by R. J. Carmichael 
CHAPULTEPEC CASTLE 
The official White House of Mexico on the outskirts of Mexico City where Diaz 
reigned so many years 




• Copyright by Underwood &= Underwood N. Y. 
MEXICO CITY AFTER THE BOMBARDMENT OF FEBRUARY, 1913 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 197 

be subdivided, appraised, placed on the market, and sold to 
private individuals on a mortgage held by the Church bearing 
interest at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum. Thus the Church 
would not only realize the full cash value of her holdings with an 
interest on her mortgages higher than she had received from the 
cultivation of the land, but all her immense holdings of rental 
residential property in such cities as Mexico, Puebla, Queretaro, 
Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Durango, Zacatecas, and others, 
remained untouched. To make this measure more effective 
and impressive, particularly in the eyes of the Catholic popula- 
tion, and at the same time to gain the good will of the clergy, 
Comonfort appointed Pedro Escudero y Echanove special 
delegate to the Vatican with instructions to explain this measure 
to the Pope, and obtain his consent and authorization thereto. 

Such an action would seem inexplicable, even in the compro- 
mising Comonfort, did we not consider that the Church was 
carrying on a violent and unprincipled propaganda throughout 
Europe with the purpose of arousing intervention in Mexico on 
the part of the powers to prevent a further curtailment of her 
privileges. Comonfort realized the imminent danger of such 
intervention and foresaw the disastrous consequences it would 
bring upon the nation, and undoubtedly hoped by this measure 
to ward off the greater evil with a less. 

" Certainly it was an unhappy event for the Comonfort gov- 
ernment," says one historian, "that Escudero y Echanove was 
not dispatched immediately on his way to Rome; and perhaps 
this was a great error committed by that government. Every- 
where it was considered as a government of the most unbridled 
demagogy whose purpose was to ransack the temples and 
demolish the altars. The Catholics all over the world pitied the 
Mexican Church, which was presented as weeping under the 
persecution of a mob of impious men. . . . The Mexican 
delegate would have enlightened the Vafican as to the real state 
of affairs and would have prevented the Supreme Pontiff from 
saying at a later date words that gave at once the death sentence to 



198 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

the Liberal cause and a new lease of life to its enemies.'' (Anselmo 
de la Portilla-Gobierno del Gen. Comonfort.) Later we shall 
witness the Pope of Rome in complicity with the European 
powers curbing the power of the popular legislation against the 
Church in Mexico, and finally drowning the new-born Mexican 
democracy in seas of blood. 

In all this vacillation and compromise the Liberals took no part 
whatever. They knew exactly what to expect of Europe, and 
particularly of Rome, and so far from exposing their weakness to 
the enemy in the manner of Comonfort, they made every effort to 
strengthen the nation to the point where it could successfully 
contend with its foes both within and without. It was the Presi- 
dent alone who by his fatuity lost prestige with the Church and 
people alike, and spoiled with his half measures the glorious 
achievements of the revolutionary Congress. His indeed was a 
wretched plight, suspended between Liberal and Cleric and 
spurned by both. When a widespread conspiracy against the 
government was discovered in the convents of San Francisco, 
San Augustine and Santo Domingo and in Mexico City, he was 
compelled by the pressure of public opinion to punish the 
offenders. But ever fearful of severe measures he confined his 
retribution to the convent of San Francisco, imprisoning the 
friars and razing the building for the opening of Independencia 
Street, permitting, however, all the others to go unharmed. 
Even Father Miranda, whose pernicious activities had caused 
the President so much distress, was released after a short confine- 
ment to become at once the head and forefront of a powerful 
nation-wide conspiracy against his liberator. Comonfort was 
perfectly cognizant of the Jesuit's plans and purposes but took 
no steps against him, in deference, we must suppose, to the 
wishes of his mother. 

The situation at this time was further aggravated by the 
arrival of a Spanish squadron at Vera Cruz, accompanied by the 
Spanish Minister, Don Miguel de los Santos Alvarez, with in- 
structions to enforce under threat of armed invasion the pay- 



THE AYUTLA REVOLUTION 199 

ment of the two claims recently dishonoured by the Mexican 
Government. Fortunately, however, Don Miguel de los Santos 
Alvarez was a man of honour and intelligence, and when the real 
nature and history of these disreputable claims were explained 
to him by the Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations he refused 
to press their payment and withdrew — an act of honesty which 
highly displeased his master, the King of Spain, and cost him his 
office. 

The time had now arrived for Congress to make a definite 
legal settlement of the land question — that great question 
wherein is found the fundamental cause of all Mexico's popular 
revolutions from the Independence to our own day. Already 
in many parts of the country the peasantry had begun to appro- 
priate the lands formerly owned by the Church to their own use, 
and in order to protect them in their holdings. Congress passed 
a law which in a few simple words defines the most advanced 
property right the world has yet seen : 

"Article I. The right of property consists in the occupation 
or possession of land, and these legal requisites cannot be conferred 
unless the land be worked and made productive. The accumula- 
tion in the hands of a few people of large territorial possessions 
which are not cultivated, or made productive, is against the 
common welfare and contrary to the principles of democratic 
and republican government." 

The violence of the Church against the Liberal government 
was increasing daily; everywhere throughout the land the priests 
openly preached disobedience and sedition as a duty to God. 
In a circular letter to his parishioners the interim Bishop of 
Puebla, Don Antonio Reyero y Lugo, commanded them, "not 
to obey the government but to work against it by all possible 
means, for such a government represented the enemies of religion 
who were attacking the independence and sovereignty of the 
Church, trying to subdue her temporal power, dispossessing her 



200 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

of her property, and compelling her, with imprisonment and 
exile, to bow before an idol raised up by impiety. . . . That 
they should follow the divine example of the first Christian 
martyrs who refused obedience to temporal power, and that 
they — the true children of the Church — must remain firm 
against the enemies of faith and become the revengers of the 
injuries against God." ("Mexico, a traves de los Siglos,*' 
Vol. 5, p. 199.) In Puebla, in San Luis Potosi, in Queretaro, 
and in many other cities cuartelazos and Clerical riots were of 
daily occurrence. In the midst of this storm on the 5th of Feb- 
ruary, 1857, the constitution was proclaimed by Congress in 
Mexico City, and Valentin Gomez Farias, the Speaker of the 
House, walked on crutches in the last breath of his life to take the 
oath of obedience to the supreme law of the land. The oath 
was then taken by the representatives and by the President of 
the Republic. The constitution was to take effect on the 16th 
of September following. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 

THE Constitution of 1857 is the exact expression of the aspi- 
rations of the Mexican people as distinguished from the Church, 
Army, and Aristocracy. Forty-seven years was this constitu- 
tion in the making — forty-seven years of such national travail 
as no modern people has endured; and for fifty-seven years 
thereafter the Mexican people fought against foes within, and 
the power of the civilized world without, to make it a reality in 
the land — and they are fighting yet. It is no Magna Charta 
framed by medieval barons, no French Civil Code framed by 
bourgeois property-worshippers, no United States Constitution 
framed by land speculators and capitalists for their own 
immediate profit;* it has no parallel in history, no kindred hu- 
man document with which it may be compared, because it is the 
first Constitution of the People^ the first expression of a pure demo- 
cracy — as opposed to a bogus democracy, the first national enun- 
ciation of the principle that the foundation of all social institutions 
is the Rights of Man — as directly and unalterably opposed to the 
Rights of Property. 

If you shall ask of the Mexican man of the people, be he 
peaceable peon tilling the fields, or skilled mechanic in the shop, 

*The exhaustive researches into the official records of the period conducted 
by Prof. Charles Beard of Columbia University and embodied by him in his 
recent work "An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution" 
(Macmillan Company), incontrovertibly proves that the United States Consti- 
tution was framed in complete disregard of the common people, by a small 
coterie of men belonging exclusively to the former colonial master class whose 
chief interest in the matter was the immediate enhancement of capitalistic as 
opposed to small agrarian interests. 

201 



202 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

or student in the schools, or miner toihng in noisome depths, 
or fighter with rifle at back for the fatherland and Hberty — 
what is the deepest desire of his heart his answer will be "The 
Constitution of 1857." And even if he, being untutored in his 
own history, cannot name you so precisely his desires, he will 
give you in his own simple words the very essence of that con- 
stitution. It is for the fundamental principles of this constitu- 
tion that the Mexican people have fought for a hundred years; 
it is for the constitution itself that they have fought for the 
past fifty-seven years. 



Article I. The Mexican people recognize that the rights of men 
are the foundation and the purpose of social institutions. In 
consequence they proclaim that all the laws and authorities of the 
country must respect and sustain the warranties stipulated by this 
Constitution. 

Here is the keystone of the New House of the People, and the 
keystone for all social structures for the future in Mexico and 
throughout the world. The age-long struggle of humanity for 
freedom might well be defined as the struggle of the Man Right 
against the Property Right. In all ages, in all places, the Prop- 
erty Right has triumphed, and to-day it dominates the entire 
political, economic, social, intellectual, and domestic life of the 
world. Only in Mexico has the Man Right found an exponent. 
The Mexican people had been f amihar with chattel slavery and 
serfdom; they had seen the abolition of slavery and the breaking 
down of serfdom succeeded by another form of slavery more 
dangerous because more entrenched, more insidious because 
more flexible and less patent to the eye — wage slavery. They 
saw that all three systems were equally vicious and equally 
founded on the assumption of the superiority of the Property 
Right over the Man Right. Therefore in the first article of the 
constitution they abolished them utterly, upholding for the first 
time in constitutional history the complete supremacy of the 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 203 

Man Right. From tlie day that this article of the constitution 
becomes effective, all economic, political, and religious institu- 
tions in Mexico must be based upon, and conform to, the princi- 
ple of the rights of men. 

Article II. In the Republic every one is born free. The slaves 
who step into the national territory recover their liberty by this mere 
fact, and have the right of the protection of the law. 

In Mexico at this time the serfs were still to a large extent 
considered as attached to the land. If an estate changed hands 
the serfs went with it as part of the equipment. This is a sys- 
tem common to all agrarian autocracies. It was prevalent under 
the Roman Empire, a,nd later spread throughout Europe as an 
integral part of the feudal system. The Spanish Conquest 
imposed it on Mexico, supplanting thereby the milder and more 
liberal feudal system of the Aztecs. 

"In the Republic every one is born free." This declaration 
was intended to destroy forever any restraint upon the freedom 
of men. In later articles of the constitution we shall witness the 
extension and elaboration of this basic principle to encompass 
the most complete freedom of the human family. The second 
part of the article recalls to us the fact that this constitution was 
framed at a time when the institution of slavery was still in power 
in the United States. The fugitive slave was a common figure 
in Mexico, and the constitution not only granted to him the full 
right of asylum, but declared that from the moment his foot 
touched Mexican soil he '^recovered his freedom,' thereby recog- 
nizing that he was born a free man. This provision is profoundly 
significant of the passion for human liberty in its fulness which 
inspired the Mexican people at this time — a passion, indeed, 
breathing in every line of the constitution. 

Article III. All education is free. The law will determine 
which profession needs a diploma for its exercise, and what requi- 
sites are to be fulfilled. 

This fundamental principle was later amplified to make edu- 
cation universal, free, non-sectarian and compulsory. The 



204 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Catholic schools of Mexico were sorry institutions, and even 
such rudimentary education as they gave was restricted to the 
rich. For the poor there was nothing but the most complete 
illiteracy. Since the presidency of Gomez Farias in 1833, 
however, the Liberals had maintained a courageous struggle 
to establish non-sectarian schools where Mexican children of all 
classes could obtain a clean, adequate education based on scien- 
tific principles. 

The thirst for knowledge, accompanied by a natural vigour 
and brilliancy of intellect, is a characteristic of the Mexican 
common people. It is a characteristic directly inherited from 
the original allied races of Mexico — the Aztecs, Toltecs, Mis- 
tecs, Mayas, and others. Before the Conquest, in Tenoxtitlan 
(Mexico City), Michoacan, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcla, there were 
schools, colleges, and universities where the national trades, 
science, art, history, and literature were taught, and the great 
national library was filled with precious and valuable manu- 
scripts, the records of the intellectual progress of ages. The 
stupidity of the Spanish Conquistadores, supported by the 
bigotry and superstition of the Spanish clergy destroyed all trace 
of this glowing intellectual life, and effectually crushed all possi- 
bility of its renaissance. For three hundred years the people 
subjected to the heel of Spain remained passive and mute in the 
darkness of ignorance and despair. Then came the trumpet 
call of Hidalgo, and the living spirit of the race which had so 
long smouldered in secret burst forth in the Independence, and 
sank amid blood and tears in the war with the United States, 
to rise again, magnificent and victorious in Article III of the 
Constitution of 1857. 

Article IV. Every man is free to adopt the profession, trade, or 
work that suits him, it being useful and honest; and to enjoy the 
product thereof. . . . 

We have revealed the conditions to which the common people 
of Mexico were subjected. To toil in peonage on the land of the 
Church or the Aristocracy was their only destiny. This article. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 205 

which gave them the right to choose their employment without 
restraint, ipso facto broke the bonds of peonage, and it did more : 
it recognized the right of the people to the enjoyment of the 
full product of their labour. No other constitution in political 
history has ever enunciated this simple, obvious, and fundamen- 
tal right of Man. No constitution based on Property Right 
could do so without violating its own foundation. The framers 
of this constitution were students of economics; they understood 
perfectly well that it would be useless and criminal to abolish 
chattel slavery and peonage merely to pave the way for wage 
slavery; they knew the world of plunder and exploitation that 
lies between "wages or salary" and "full product of labour;" 
and they struck at the very root of the evil, abolishing economic 
exploitation in its entirety, chattel slavery, peonage, wage 
slavery. 

Article V. No man shall be compelled to work without his plain 
consent and without just compensation. The state will not permit 
to become effective any contract, pact or agreement with the purpose 
of the curtailm^vt, the loss, or the irrevocable sacrifice of the liberty 
of any man, i.tay the cause be for personal labour, education, or reli- 
gious vows. The law in consequence does not recognize monastic 
orders, and will not permit their establishment, no matter what may 
be the denomination or purpose for which they pretend to be estab- 
lished. Neither will be permitted a contract or agreement by which 
a man makes a pact for his proscription or exile. 

Chattel slavery, peonage, serfdom, contract labour, are all of 
them institutions created for the express purpose of exploiting 
and enslaving the people. Utterly opposed to freedom, civiliza- 
tion and humanity as they are, they must be destroyed root 
and branch before further progress becomes possible. The 
workers constitute the only useful portions of society. They are 
the makers of nations and the builders of civilization. The con- 
stitution recognizes this and proceeds to safeguard their freedom, 
not only by recognizing their right to choice of labour, and the 
right to the full product of that labour, but by declaring null and 



206 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

void any relinquishment of these rights that by force or fraud 
they may be induced to make. Compulsory work is the essence 
of slavery, and the constitution is the embodiment of the most 
complete civil liberty the mind of man can conceive. Here again 
we have the Man Right clearly placed high above the Property 
Right; the right of a man to disown any pact into which he has 
entered to the curtailment of his freedom is recognized as sa- 
cred and inviolable, and incomparably more worthy of safeguard 
than the sanctity of the most righteous property pact. 

No man can be compelled to work without his plain consent 
and just compensation. The framers of this constitution were 
men of the people. They knew perfectly well, as we have said, 
the vast gulf of exploitation and plunder which lies between 
salary or wages on the one hand, and the full product of labour or 
just compensation on the other, and they proposed to make that 
knowledge effective. Mexico in this article has the honour of 
being the first nation to lay down the great economic principle 
which some day must govern the earth: that society, not the 
individual, is the arbiter of the social equivalent for labour. 

The monastic orders were suppressed because bitter experi- 
ence had proved them to be an unmitigated evil, the breeding 
grounds of sedition, oppression, exploitation, and social deprav- 
ity. The basic immorality of a parasitic life further undermined 
their common integrity and it was a normal consequence that 
the parasite and sexual pervert should become the traitor and 
the intriguer. Out of the cloisters sprang all the cuartelazos 
which had flayed the common people; out of the cloisters sprang 
all the misery and poverty of the common people, their degrada- 
tion and national disgrace. To maintain the monasteries would 
have been the prolongation of a social crime; to suppress them 
was the first step toward the salvation and redemption of the 
nation. 

"Neither will be permitted a contract or agreement by which 
a man makes a pact for his proscription or exile. ' ' The constitu- 
tion thus makes the rights of men the absolute condition of life. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 207 

The Life Right and the Man Right are one in the new social 
order, and proscriptions by which the individual resigns his 
Man Right are deemed absurd and of no effect. No man 
without rights had a place in Mexico. 

Article VI. The expression of ideas shall not he subjected to any 
judicial or governmental prosecution except in cases of attach upon 
the public morality, the rights of a third party, or the prevention of a 
crime or a disturbance of public order. 

Article VII. The liberty of writing and publishing writings 
upon any matter is inviolable. No previous censorship nor impo- 
sition of bonds upon the writers nor the publishers for the purpose 
of curtailing the freedom of the press can he established by any law 
or authority, such freedom being restricted to respect of private life, 
morals, and public business. 

In these articles is firmly established the right of free speech 
and the right of free press. These constitute the very founda= 
tions and bulwark of a pure democracy, and therefore are con- 
tinually assailed and beset by the forces of reaction. 

Article VIII. This deals with the right of petition to the govern- 
ment. 

Article IX. This gives the right of assembly. 

Article X. This establishes the right of every man to possess and 
carry arms for his safety and legitimate defence. 

Article XI. This deals with immigration to the country and 
other travelling both from the country and into the same. 

Article XII. This establishes the invalidity of all titles of nobil- 
ity, prerogatives, and hereditary honours. 

Article XIII. In the Mexican Republic no one shall be sub- 
jected to private laws nor special courts. No man or corporation 
shall enjoy fueros nor receive emoluments unless they he a compen- 
sation for public services and already fixed by law. 

Thus end the forty-seven years of bloody battle against the ec= 
clesiastical and military fueros which have played so prominent 
a part in the history of Mexico. So long as a large privileged 
class existed immune from the civil law no social organization. 



208 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

much less a democracy, was possible. Article XIII, therefore, 
destroys clerical and military privilege as the fmidamental 
prerequisite of a healthy social life. 

"No emoluments unless they be a compensation for public 
services and already fixed by law." Thus was abolished not 
only the rents, tributes, tithings, and taxes which the Church 
had been accustomed to extort from the poor by the aid of the 
executive force, but also the universal practice of the clergy of 
extorting the last centavo from the dying peon and his super- 
stitious relatives under threat of the law, and the still more 
terrifying threat of refusing the last unction. Henceforth 
neither the priest as an individual nor the Church as an organ- 
ization could prostitute the political institutions of the country 
to the purposes of fraud, plunder, and oppression. 

Article XIV. This establishes the principle that no one shall be 
tried by retroactive laws. 

Article 'XY.^^No treaties can be made for the extradition of 
political offenders; neither for those criminals whose crime was 
committed in a country where they had been slaves; neither can a 
treaty or agreement be made by which the warranties or rights that 
this constitution gives to man or citizen be altered. 

From the establishment of the full freedom of person, of 
labour, of speech, and of press in Mexico the constitution logi- 
cally proceeds to the recognition of similar rights in the in- 
dividuals of all nations, and refuses to permit the complicity 
of Mexico with the acts of foreign powers in violation of these 
rights. Thus was the full right of asylum established not only 
for political and religious refugees but even for criminals whose 
crime was committed in slavery. It must be remembered that 
at this time slavery was the dominant issue in the United 
States; runaway slaves, some of them perhaps with blood on 
their hands, continually fled to Mexico, and it behooved the 
framers of the constitution to see to it that their policy in regard 
to these men be clearly defined, lest Mexico be drawn into com- 
plicity with the most dangerous enemy of her liberty. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 209 

Article XVI. This article establishes the principle that the fam- 
ily and domicile are inviolable, except for the purposes of arrest 
under a warrant from a proper court expressing the charge. 

Article XVII. No one shall be arrested or imprisoned for debts 
of a purely civil character. No one shall exercise violence to claim 
his rights. The courts will always be ready for the administra- 
tion of justice. This will be free, the costs being abolished, 

A characteristic of the old barbaric legislation of Mexico, as 
of all Europe and the United States in former times, was the 
right of the creditor to imprison his debtor for default. This 
was a curse which fell principally upon the labouring class, 
for the exploiting class, having absorbed the wealth of the coun- 
try, were alone in the position to become creditors. The f ramers 
of this constitution were men of the people, and as such they 
naturally abolished a usage which had oppressed the people for 
centuries. 

Article XXVII. Private property shall not he taken without the 
consent of the owner, except in case of public utility, and by 
just payment therefor. Rdigious corporations or institutions, no 
matter of what domination, character, durability, or purpose, and 
civil corporations when under the patronage, direction, or superin- 
tendency of religious institutions, or ministers of any cult, shall not 
have the legal capacity to acquire or manage any real estate except 
the buildings which are used immediately and directly for the ser- 
vices of the said institutions; neither will the law recognize any 
mortgage on any property held by these institutions. 

All the principles for the establishment of the most complete 
human freedom and for the upbuilding of a civilization of sur- 
passing splendour had been laid down in this constitution. But 
these of themselves could be of no avail unless every individual 
in Mexico from the least to the greatest was placed in immedi- 
ate possession of the full means of subsistence adequate for the 
present and capable of indefinite expansion in the future. Agri- 
culture is the economic base of man: cultivable land and equality 
of access thereto is the foundation of democracy and all potent 



210 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

civilization. We have seen that, pending the proclamation of 
the constitution. Congress had passed a law entitling every man 
to as much land as he could make productive. Article XXVII 
of the constitution now at a blow places the vast illicit holdings 
of the Church at the disposal of the people. Thus were estab- 
lished the foundations for an agrarian democracy. Articles IV 
and V, recognizing the right of the workman to the full product 
of his labour, or just compensation for his task, would have been 
impotent if there had not been given to the workman at the same 
time free access to the land, thereby making of him an inde- 
pendent man, sovereign over himself, his land, and its products, 
and in that very fact endowing him with the economic power 
which alone could make these provisions living realities in so- 
ciety. It is needless to point out that an independent farmer 
will not work for another unless it be at a higher rate of remuner- 
ation than he can achieve by the cultivation of his own land. 
Automatically, therefore, the vexed question of what constitutes 
the full product of labour is decided and enforced. In Mexico 
to-day the big land-owners have seized and appropriated thou- 
sands of the small land holdings established under the Constitu- 
tion of 1857, not because they need more land — they could 
not possibly cultivate a tenth of what they already possess — 
hut because they need slaves. 

Article XXVIII. State and Church are independent. Congress 
cannot make any law establishing or forbidding any religion. . . 

The foregoing constitute the fundamental principles of the 
constitution. Other articles followed, establishing the form of 
government as republican, federal, representative, democratic, 
and popular; adopting the Montesquieu system of the division 
of the functions of government into executive, legislative, and 
judicial; defining the rights and duties of citizenship, and formu- 
lating the methods of election in accordance with methods 
generally adopted in other federal republics. 

From the moment when this constitution was proclaimed the 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 211 

peons began to take full advantage of it. If at first the majority 
of them, overawed by the threats of the Church, homesteaded 
on the ecclesiastical estates in fear and trembling, little by little 
they began to gain confidence, and in two or three years some 
million of them at least had become sturdy, independent farm- 
ers. 

But the constitution which had brought such blessing to the 
peon brought naught but destruction to the strongest and best- 
organized institutions in Mexico. Accustomed only to the exer- 
cise of tyranny, and utterly unused and untrained to obedience to 
the civil law, the Church and Army struggled fiercely against 
the impending destruction of their privilege to plunder and 
oppress. When the Secretary of the Interior issued orders that 
all government employees should take the oath of obedience to the 
constitution, the Church deliberately advised and commanded 
disobedience to the order. According to Zamacois, "The Arch- 
bishop of Mexico, Don Lazaro de la Garza, announced in 
circulars sent to the bishops a few days after the order for the 
taking of the oath had been given, that since the articles of this 
constitution were inimical to the institution, doctrine, and rites 
of the Catholic Church neither the clergymen nor laymen could 
take this oath under any pretext whatever. In view of this 
communication the bishops of all the dioceses sent circulars to 
their respective country vicars and the parish curates, and to the 
other ecclesiastics informing them. First: That it was not 
lawful to swear allegiance to the constitution because its articles 
were contrary to the institution, doctrine, and rites of the Cath- 
olic Church. Second : That this communication must be made 
public, and copies of it distributed as widely as possible. 
Third : That those who had made this oath must retract it at 
the confessional and make this retraction as public as possible, 
and that they must notify the government of their action." 
(Zamacois, "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 14, p. 525.) 

To a devoutedly Catholic population these orders were dis- 
turbing enough. Torn between their opposing political and 



212 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

religious beliefs, they hesitated and fell into the utmost confu- 
sion. Even so, political good sense undoubtedly would have 
won the day in the teeth of the Church had not a tremendous 
mandate come to them from the Pope of Rome, the vicar of 
Christ on earth, to disobey utterly and completely all the com- 
mands of the impious Liberal government. This mandate of 
Pope Pius IX not only unified and reinforced the Catholic 
opposition in Mexico, but the Catholic opposition throughout 
the world against the Liberal government, thus paving the 
way for the internecine strife and the armed European inter- 
vention which followed hard upon it. 

The last paragraph of this significant document in which 
Pope Pius IX deliberately preaches treason, sedition, and re- 
bellion to a free people enjoying the benefits of an enlightened 
democratic government, is here given as being well worth care- 
ful consideration. After detailing at great length and with 
much complaint the various and numerous curtailments of the 
ecclesiastical privilege and prerogative sustained by the Church 
in Mexico at the hands of the Liberal government, the docu- 
ment concludes : 

''Thus we make known to the faith in Mexico y and to the Catholic 
universe, that we energetically condemn every decree that the Mex- 
ican Government has enacted against the Catholic religion, against 
the Church, and her sacred ministers and "pastors, against her 
laws, rights, and property, and also against the authority of 
this Holy See. We raise Our Pontifical Voice with apostolic free- 
dom before you to condemn, reprove, and declare null, void, and 
without any value, the said decrees, and all others which have been 
enacted by the civil authorities in such contempt of the ecclesiastical 
authority of this Holy See, and with such injury to the religion, to 
the sacred pastors, and illustrious men. For this we command that 
those who have contributed to the fulfilment of the said decrees by 
action, advice, or command shall seriously meditate upon the pen- 
alties and censures imposed by the apostolic constitutions, and by 
the canons of the councils against the violators of sacred persons 




Copyr'rj^lU by American Press Association 
GENERAL CARRANZA ON CAMPAIGN 

Guard of Yaqui Indians escorting General Carranza to the mines at Cannanea, 
Sonora, during his campaign for election in October, 1913 




Copyright by Undenvood & Underwood, N. Y. 
YAQUI SOLDIERS 

Strong of will, of almost superhuman endurance, of indomitable courage, of 
superior intelligence, the Yaquis make excellent workmen or soldiers 




Copyright by Underwood &° Underwood, N. Y. 
GENERAL ZAPATA, CALLED " THE ATILLA OF THE SOUTH " 

The revolt in southern Mexico has centred about the "Zapatistas" for three 
years. In spite of his sanguinary reputation, Zapata has restored thou- 
sands of acres of land to small native farmers. He recognizes Carranza as 
the head of the 1912-1914 revolt 




Copyright by Underwood 6" Underwood, N. Y, 

ZAPATA AND HIS MEN 

"In the latter state (Morelos) the far-sighted Zapata had never for a moment 

relinquished the fight, directing his forces as vigorously against 

Madero as against his predecessor" (See page 350) 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 ^13 

and things, against the violators of the ecclesiastical liberty and 
power, and against the usurpers of the rights of this Holy See.'' 

The entire document may be verified in "Mexico a traves de 
los Siglos," Vol. 5, p. 226. 

This papal mandate fell like a bomb upon the people of Mex- 
ico. In any society there are always two main conflicting 
factions, the exploiting and the exploited, the rulers and the 
ruled, the parasites and the workers. The issue between 
them, however, has never been clearly discerned by the common 
people as a whole, for the parasitic class always make it their 
prime business to use the avenues of education and pub- 
licity which He solely in their hands utterly to confuse the 
minds of the common people, and to prevent them from dis- 
covering the existence, purpose, and history of this great divi- 
sion in society. Thus the common people are forever divided 
against themselves, the more astute, refusing to be hypnotized 
by the master class, follow the party of revolution (not reform) ; 
the less astute, following the dictates of the school, the press, the 
pulpit, and the cheap politician, become in the hands of 
their masters the very weapons, by ballot or bullet against 
their own emancipation and the emancipation of their fellows. 
The division is not clearly made nor seen until some social 
climax is reached — some national crisis. Then the great mass 
rends apart, and the emancipated mind beholds the greatest 
tragedy known to man — the people divided among themselves, 
shedding each other's blood, while the masters direct the fight, 
gather the spoils, and retire to the banquet of victory, there to 
toast amid loud laughter those who have prostituted their vote 
or mutilated their bodies in the destruction of that which alone 
could bring them freedom and development. 

In the period which we are now observing the same cleavage 
was latent; but not until the great crisis produced by the papal 
mandate had occurred did it become apparent. Then it was 
seen that the Mexican people, magnificent as had been their 
Revolution of Ayutla, all emancipating as had been their Con* 



214 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

stitution of 1857, superbly sane and bold as had been the work 
of their great popularly elected Congress, were still, to a large 
extent, in the thrall of Rome, that the word of the Pope was 
still more powerful in their ears than the approaching heavy 
tread of tyranny, of hunger and of death, and more to be obeyed 
than the trumpet-call of freedom. They had sent their repre- 
sentatives to the metropolis pledged to work for their liberty and 
rights against the material interests of the privileged class. 
They had found in the proclamation of the constitution the 
fulfilment of their long-expected redemption. They now saw 
before them an upward march of such freedom, dignity, and 
wealth as had scarcely entered their boldest dreams; but when 
they heard the mandate of the Pope, listened to the dread com- 
mands of this Super-man, the vicar of Christ, inspired by the 
Holy Ghost with the wisdom of the Most High, they fell back, 
startled, dumfounded, and afraid. The power fell from their 
strong arms, the light went out of their newly awakened intel- 
ligences, and the psychological debauchery of centuries at the 
hands of the Church triumphed in them over the united force 
of all the highest instincts of humanity. 

The Pope's mandate, as we have seen, was no half-hearted 
affair. On the contrary, it condemned to destruction the whole 
glorious edifice of human liberty reared at the cost of such 
tremendous sacrifice in the Constitution of 1857. It not only 
denounced, as a sacrilegious crime against God and the Holy 
See, the confiscation of the ecclesiastical estates, and the abo- 
lition of fueros, the prohibition of labour contracts and religious 
vows, the freedom of conscience, speech, and published opinion, 
but it counselled and upheld sedition, treason, and rebellion 
against the constitutional law of Mexico as worthy of the praise 
and honour of men and the reward of heaven. Thus there 
was no possible middle course, no conceivable compromise left 
to the Mexican people as a body. The Pope deliberately rent 
them asunder, father against son, brother against brother, to 
their own destruction and the glory of God ! 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 215 

The real significance of this papal mandate, as likewise the real 
significance of the Constitution of 1857, which it was intended 
to overthrow, would seem to have escaped all historians, and to 
have left no impress upon public opinion. The fundamental 
importance of the one can only be measured by the fundamental 
importance of the other. No document in history is prof ounder 
or of more far-reaching consequence than this Mexican Consti- 
tution of 1857. It may yet become — and that shortly — the 
engrossing subject of international diplomacy, the casus belli 
between international reaction and international revolution, 
and ultimately the Magna Charta of a new civilization. 

In like manner the papal mandate aimed at its destruction is a 
document of equally profound and far-reaching consequence. 
The fact that within the last sixty years the papal power has been 
directly exerted to overthrow the lawfully constituted authorities of a 
free Republic should strike the discerning mind as a fact of more 
than passing significance. 

These two documents, therefore, are of immense importance. 
If the constitution is the challenge of the impending world-wide 
social revolution, the papal mandate of Pius IX is the answer 
of world-wide reaction; and the struggle which began then is in 
full force to-day and must go on till the world be ruled by one or 
the other. 

At first only a few sporadic uprisings in different parts of the 
country occurred to attest the fact that reaction, now unified 
and supported by the vicar of Christ, was preparing to overthrow 
all the hard-won triumphs of the people represented by the 
Liberal government and the Constitution of 1857. 

It will be remembered that a decree authorizing the organiza- 
tion of civicos, and the suppression of the regular army had been 
enacted by Congress and supported by the constitution. In 
spite of this, however, and in spite of the patent untrustworthi- 
ness of the regular soldiery as evinced in the outbreak of several 
cuartelazos against the government, Comonfort on one pretext 
or another had managed to retain the larger part of Santa Ana's 



216 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

army. This fatal mistake again gave into the hands of the 
Church the very weapon she had used for fifty years against the 
liberties of the people and the supremacy of the civil authority 
— the very weapon she needed and whose destruction would 
have left her impotent. 

In the rapid succession of events the time had now arrived 
for the election of the first President, Congress, and Supreme 
Court under the new constitution. Comonfort's actions as pre- 
constitutional President, although they had angered the Liberals 
in Congress, had not alarmed the people at large to any extent, 
and they now elected him to office by a vast majority. Un- 
doubtedly his prestige as the heroic leader of the Ayutla 
Revolution outweighed in their minds the weakness of his inde- 
terminate policy. At the same time Benito Juarez was elected 
President of the Supreme Court, and on the 1st of September 
both officers, together with a strong Liberal Congress, were duly 
inaugurated. In his inaugural address Comonfort astounded 
the vast concourse of people who had gathered to partake of a 
ceremony monumental in their history by declaring, "One of 
the greatest remedies for the salvation of our country will be, 
it is my belief, the adoption of certain healthy and useful amend- 
ments to the constitution. To this end the Government will 
draw up as speedily as possible the alterations that are deemed 
necessary, and confidently expects you to adopt them without 
delay. . . ." This declaration, a clear and unmistakable 
betrayal of the constitution, and the popular conquests of the 
Revolution of Ayutla, filled the people with dismay, and further 
added to the moral confusion wrought in them by the recent 
papal mandate. 

Meanwhile the Church, although publicly defying the govern- 
ment's authority, had shrouded her practical plans for its over- 
throw in the utmost secrecy. Well guarded as these plans were, 
however, their general tenor and purpose could not be entirely 
suppressed, and the air was vibrant with the vague apprehension 
that heralds a storm. "The moment was impending when the 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 217 

veil would be torn asunder, and the nation would be compelled 
to face in all its nudity the intrigues that for a long time had 
been hatching, thus clearing a situation that scarcely could be 
further prolonged." ("Mexico a traves de los Siglos," Vol. 5, 
p. 365.) 

According to arrangements previously made, the constitution 
took effect on the 16th of September, 1857. The next day — 
only fifteen days after the inaugural ceremonies mentioned above 
— Felix Zuloaga, the commander-in-chief of the army, headed a 
powerful cuartelazo against the government, proclaiming that 
the constitution was not acceptable to the nation, and that it 
was therefore abrogated; that Comonfort would remain Presi- 
dent as the choice of the people, and that a Congress would be 
elected forthwith for the purpose of framing a new constitution 
more adapted to the needs of the country, and that in the mean- 
time the President would appoint representatives from each 
state to act as his provisional council. 

The prominence of Comonfort's name in this proclamation, 
coupled with the fact that Zuloaga was his own appointee, and 
that the cuartelazo was started and the proclamation made at 
Tacubaya, his summer residence, shows that the vacillating 
President had at last fallen so utterly into the hands of the re- 
actionaries that he had conspired with them to betray the Con- 
stitution of 1857, and to destroy the very triumphs of the people 
for which he had fought so hard and so well. Scarcely, however, 
had the news of the coup d'etat shocked the nation than Comon- 
fort, deserted by his cabinet, his personal friends, and the entire 
Liberal party, realized the terrible mistake he had made. "I 
have changed my legal title of President for that of a miserable 
brigand,'- he cried, "but everything is done and there is no rem- 
edy. I resign myself to the course of events, and God will show 
me my path." 

He now discovered that the ecclesiastics, whom he had be- 
friended by his treason, scorned him as fiercely as the Liberals, 
while from all parts of the country came the news that the people 
and the state governments utterly repudiated him. Half fren- 



218 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

zied with chagrin and remorse he endeavoured to right the 
wrong he had committed by proclaiming the full reestablishment 
of the constitution. 

Too late ! Felix Zuloaga had already entered Mexico City at 
the head of his army and had attacked the government forces 
from the arsenal. For two days the fight raged, Comonfort 
opposing his own cuartelazo with the scanty remnant of the 
national guard who remained loyal to him. "Then, as in the 
revolt of 1847," says Baz, "the friars patrolled the trenches of 
the revolting soldiery, exciting them to the fight; then, as in that 
other epoch, the clergy paid the wages of the troops, and their 
agents were bribing the officers of the government that swelled 
the ranks of the enemy. The city was deserted; at night time 
the only light was the blaze of the artillery fire and the sinister 
flashing of the bombs; in every street there were breastworks, 
and from every door came forth the groans of the dying and the 
moans of the wounded." (Gustavo Baz, "Vida de Juarez.") 

Before the close of the second day Comonfort found himself 
alone in the fight, defeated, deserted, despised. Filled with bit- 
ter remorse, he wrote out his resignation and left Mexico City 
forever, to die in voluntary exile. The epitaph of his career is 
aptly expressed in his own words : "I have been a good son but 
a bad patriot." 

To quote Baz again, "The reaction was victorious in the 
capital, and the wickedness of one man and the ambitions of 
others had provoked a civil war that was destined to last until 
the extermination of one of the contending factions. The 
joyous clamouring of the bells, the majestic music of the Te 
Deum, the rejoicing of the Clericals everywhere, and the drunk- 
enness of the soldiery, welcomed that victory of fraud, ambition, 
and reaction. ..." (Gustavo Baz, "Vida de Juarez," p. 133.) 

Felix Zuloaga was now proclaimed Provisional President by 
the soldiery and clergy. His first activity was to abolish the 
constitution, reestablish the clergy in the full possession of their 
property, fueros and privileges, and to suppress the freedom of 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 219 

speech, of press, and of religious creed. He then hastened to 
dispatch a message to the Pope announcing in joyful terms the 
overthrow of the constitutional government and the complete 
triumph of the Clerical party; and in due time received the papal 
congratulations in the following form : 

"Pope Pius IX, to our beloved son, the illustrious and respect- 
able man, Felix Zuloaga, President ad interim of the Mexican 
Republic. 

"Beloved Son, Illustrious and Respectable Man, Greetings 
and Apostolic Blessings. We have had great pleasure in re- 
ceiving in the last days your letter of the 1st of January, dictated 
by deep sentiments of piety and veneration toward us and 
toward this Apostolic See. The relation therein of the change 
of circumstances which has recently occurred in your Republic 
gives us to understand that, having been elected President ad 
interim, yoiir ardent wishes are to nullify and abolish without 
delay the laws and decrees that were instituted during the late 
unhappy condition of the nation against the Church and her 
sacred ministers. Certainly we have received great consolation 
from the purport of your letter which shows how earnestly you 
and your government desire to reestablish relations with this 
Holy See, and to work assiduously that our Holy Religion may 
flourish in its height of power in Mexico according to the deep 
aspirations of all good Mexicans. . . . Bestowing upon 
you the blessings of God, and in testimony of our paternal 
affection and good-will, we give with great love our Apostolic 
blessings to you. Beloved Son, Illustrious and Respectable Man, 
and to all the clergymen, and to the faithful men of that Republic. 
Given in St. Pedro de Rome, March 18, 1858. Pius Nono."* 

These documents, considered in connection with the events 
which evolved them, vividly portray the success of the reaction 
achieved by the clergy and soldiery under the counsel and pat- 
ronage of the Pope. 



* These documents can be verified in "Mexico d traves de los Siglos," pp. 
281, 282. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 

BY THE mere fact of complicity in the coup d'etat which 
had abohshed the constitution, Comonfort had impeached him- 
self as President of the Republic. To Congress alone belonged 
the right to amend, reform, or abrogate the constitution, and 
Comonfort by his attempt to appropriate the congressional 
prerogative had become an outlaw. According to the constitu- 
tion, the President of the Supreme Court, who was likewise Vice- 
President of the Republic, succeeded to the presidency of the 
Republic ad interim whenever that ojffice became vacant before 
the expiration of the full presidential term, owing to the absence, 
incapacity, resignation, impeachment, or death of its incumbent. 
Benito Juarez now, therefore, became constitutional President 
of the Republic. 

In view of its impossible position Congress agreed to dissolve 
by its own act, not, however, until it had proclaimed the 
impeachment of Comonfort, recognized Benito Juarez as law- 
ful President, and recommended the governors of all the various 
states to uphold the constitutional authority and defend the 
government. 

Immediately after his recognition by Congress Juarez left 
Mexico City for Guanajuato and proceeded to organize a cabinet 
of staunch Liberal veterans, Guillermo Prieto, Melchor Ocampo, 
Manuel Ruiz, and Leon Guzman. Again the struggle of fifty 
years was renewed between the oppressor and the oppressed; 
between the Clergy, Army, and Aristocracy on the one hand, and 
the common people on the other. But now for the first time in 

220 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 221 

their history the common people fought for a clear-cut consti- 
tution, the full expression of their aspirations, embodying their 
principles of liberty, and adopted by the majority of the nation 
as the supreme law of the land. 

"On one side, " says Baz, "were the revolutionists armed with 
the buckler of legal power and ready to shed their blood for 
freedom of thought and speech, for the suppression of the monas- 
teries, the confiscation of the ecclesiastical estates, the support 
of the civil power as the only recognized authority in society, 
and for the upholding of the complete equality of men and the 
liberty and civilization of the Republic. On the other side 
were the Clergy and the Army banded together to reestablish a 
government born of treason and mutiny, to reenforce all the 
abuses that were left as a legacy to Mexico by the colonial 
regime, and to proclaim as invulnerable and divine rights the rule 
of the clergy, the army fueros, and the inviolability of the 
Church estates, and damning as heresy the freedom of con- 
science and the equality of men. 

"The revolution was a genuine social revolution; it was a 
struggle to overthrow many years of deeply entrenched interests, 
three centuries of prejudice, and ideas as old as the world, as old 
as fanaticism and liberty. The progranune of the one element 
was to destroy in order to create; the programme of the other 
to conserve in order to destroy." (Gustavo Baz, "Vida de 
Juarez," p. 136.) 

The strength of the reactionaries lay in the army, powerful, 
disciplined, well entrenched in all parts of the country; the 
strength of the people lay in the national guard or bodies of 
civicos rapidly organized by the governors of the states. 

The first considerable encounter of a civil war destined to 
deluge the country in blood for three long years took place at 
Salamanca, State of Guanajuato, and resulted in the defeat of 
the Constitutionalists at the hands of a superior force of reac- 
tionaries. This reverse forced Juarez to remove his seat of 
government from Guanajuato to Guadalajara, whence he was 



THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

again compelled to remove to Vera Cruz. The Liberals, how- 
ever, once organized, rapidly gained full control in the north, 
sweeping the states of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Aguas Cal- 
ientes, and later extending their control to all the states of the 
south, thus confining the power of the reactionaries to Mexico 
City and the adjacent states of the centre. But the fight was 
destined to be bitter and prolonged, for against the limited re- 
sources of the Constitutionalists were pitted the millions of the 
Church, and against the calm statements of the constitution 
were pitted the inflammatory, seditious harangues of every 
priest in the country. 

The Church, indeed, leaning strongly upon her fundamental 
policy of psychological debauchery, exploited every device 
known to the science of class rule in order to counterbalance the 
simple, mighty appeal to the people of the great Constitution 
of 1857. Her priests throughout the land proclaimed a "holy 
war," characterizing the struggle as one against the enemies of 
God. The soldiers marched to battle bedizened with scapu- 
laries and crosses, bearing aloft flags and banners inscribed with 
the sacred images and symbols of religion. Those who fell 
were extolled as martyrs in the holy cause — the peers of the 
first Christian martyrs under the Roman Empire. To the 
commander-in-chief of the Constitutional forces, Santos Degol- 
lado, the clergy gave the nickname "Antiochus Epiphanes," 
after the conqueror of Jerusalem who endeavoured to uproot 
the Jewish religion, 170 B. C, and to Miguel Miramon, the 
commander-in-chief of the reactionary army, the name of 
"Judas, the Maccabee," or "Young Maccabee," after the great 
defender of the Jewish faith; and to complete the farce, they gave 
to the Constitutionalists the name of "Philistines," and to the 
reactionaries the name of "Israel, the appointed of the Lord." 
All this elaborate misrepresentation to obscure the real 
issue and blind the peon to his economic birthright, and in 
spite of the fact that the Constitutionalists were as fervent devotees 
of the Catholic faith as the most ardent reactionary! 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 223 

Meanwhile the conspiracy for the establishment of a mon- 
archy was developing with great rapidity. It was no longer a 
matter of secret sessions in the cloister but of public pronounce- 
ment. If any doubt had existed in the minds of the people in 
regard to the purpose of the ruling class, that doubt was defi- 
nitely set at rest by an editorial published in La Sociedady the 
Catholic official organ in its issue of December 14, 1858, an 
excerpt from which is given below : 

"It is necessary for our national Conservative party to be 
united with a foreign power from Europe in order to safeguard 
forever our own existence. The Conservative party ought to 
interest, for the sake of its own life, one or two European na- 
tions, generous enough and sufficiently strong and united to 
protect the great principles of national equilibrium in what con- 
cerns us in particular. It is necessary to make a strong alliance 
with those European nations that we may be protected in our 
religion and nationality from the Protestant power north of 
us (the United States). Our happiness and the safety of our 
Catholic religion depend upon our close union and obedience 
to the Vatican, and on our alliance with the Catholic nations 
of Europe. To the Catholic European world it will be by no 
means convenient that the Catholic world of America degen- 
erate into Protestantism; to the political European world, and 
its general interests, it will be by no means convenient that 
America become democratic or fall under the influence of the 
Washington Capitol." 

Zuloaga, of course, was the very heart of the conspiracy. " In 
following that policy, Zuloaga, in his character of President, of. 
ficially sought the intervention of Spain, England, and France? 
and particularly of the last." (Francisco Arrangoiz, Mexico, 
desde 1808, hasta 1865.) To obtain the Spanish good-will and 
cooperation he recognized again the fraudulent Spanish credit 
which had been repudiated by Juarez with the consent of the 



224 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Spanish minister himself, the high-minded Don Miguel de los 
Santos Alvarez. And as if this were not burden enough to lay 
on the backs of an impoverished and exhausted people he dared 
to recognize as a national debt a loan of $15,000,000 drawn by 
the "Young Maccabee" on a French- Jewish banking firm, 
Jecker, Torre & Co. 

Meanwhile Juarez, from his seat of government at Vera Cruz, 
not only roundly denounced and repudiated those flagrant acts 
of treason and embezzlement, but he immediately enacted the 
celebrated Leyes de Reforma for the drastic enforcement of the 
constitution within the range of its power. These Leyes de Re- 
forma (reform laws) decreed : 

I. The immediate suppression of all monasteries and convents, 
and the immediate and complete confiscation of all Church 
property to the use of the nation. 

II. The adoption of the jury system, and the thorough en- 
forcement of the abolition of fueros. 

III. The entire freedom of public instruction and the estab- 
lishment of free primary schools, high schools, universities, 
professional, and trade schools. 

IV. The adoption of a policy by which school teachers and 
professors were to become the most highly remunerated and 
responsible oflBcers of the government. 

V. The establishment of civil recording authorities for births, 
marriages, and deaths, thus abolishing the much abused privilege 
of the Church in the matter of establishing the civil status of 
persons. 

VI. The estabhshment of friendly relations with foreign 
powers. 

VII. The recognition of the national guard as the sole military 
support of public liberty and of the constitution. 

VIII. The national construction, ownership, and operation 
of all railroads and telegraph lines, to the subordination (not 
exclusion) of the right of private individuals and corporations 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 225 

to build railroads and operate industries subject to certain con- 
ditions. 

IX. The subdivision of the great estates into small farms to 
be assigned to the tillers of the soil upon the payment of a small 
sum to cover the expenses of subdivision and assignment. And 
the encouragement of foreign immigrants to settle in Mexico 
upon the same footing as the Mexicans. 

Articles VIII and IX are well worthy of emphasis. Juarez 
undoubtedly aimed at an ultimate, fully-developed collectivist 
administration of the means of wealth production, and in these 
two articles he paves a royal road to that consummation. The 
means of transportation and communication absolutely control 
industry and commerce. Therefore, so long as the political 
power lay in the hands of the people it meant their full political 
and economic control of the exploiting class, pending its ultimate 
expropriation. Again, a nation of small land-holders, owning 
their own means of transportation and communication, is the 
only real foundation of any economic or political freedom. On 
such a basis the development of a full system of cooperative 
industry to the annihilation of capitalist production is but a 
matter of time and logical growth. 

When this remarkable document, which reaffirmed the issues 
of the Constitutional party in the civil war, was promulgated in 
Vera Cruz on the 7th of July, 1859, Europe was still reverberat- 
ing to the thunders of the Communist manifesto of Marx and 
Engels; the first volume of "The Analysis of Capitalist Produc- 
tion" had already diagnosed the stupendous ills of society and 
pointed the path to emancipation; the Spectre of Democracy 
had already arisen to strike terror into every court and cabinet 
in Europe, and to arouse in them a frenzy of repression. It is no 
matter for wonder, therefore, that the Constitution of 1856, the com- 
plete political expression of the revolutionary demands not only of 
the Mexican proletariat but of the world proletariat, should have 
been regarded with bitter fear and hatred by the capitalist powers of 



226 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Europe: no matter for wonder that at the moment of its victory they 
combined without so much as a protest from the United States, to 
destroy it utterly , and lay waste the land which had given it birth. 

From the moment of its inception the civil war had developed 
in intensity and bitterness. Scarcely a day passed without a 
bloody encounter between the contending factions. As in the 
present revolution (1910-1914), the reactionaries endeavoured 
to strike terror into the Constitutionalists by the summary exe- 
cution of all prisoners of war, and, as in the present revolution, 
the Constitutionalists retaliated. The seriousness of the eco- 
nomic issue admitted no dalliance, no mercy. 

Religious issue there was none — in spite of the persistent 
efforts of the Church to create the illusion of a "holy war." Con- 
stitutionalists and reactionary alike professed the Catholic faith. 
Human liberty and economic emancipation alone was the ques- 
tion. On the field of battle the dying revolutionist begged for 
a priest to perform the last rites and speed his soul heavenward 
equally with the dying reactionary; and when the priests, acting 
under the orders of the high prelates and the Pope, began to 
refuse the last unction to their enemies on the field of battle 
the Liberal leaders retorted with stringent orders for the sum- 
mary execution of any priest who failed to perform this duty. 

In spite of the largess of the Church and the harangues of 
the priest the struggle must soon have ended in the triumph of 
the Constitutionalists had not the reactionaries possessed in 
the person of Miramon, the "Young Maccabee," a leader of 
remarkable energy, ability, and courage. Aided by Leonardo 
Marquez, a leader of hardly less ability, he was the scourge of 
the Constitutionalists in numerous encounters. His crowning 
achievement, however, was the capture of Guadalajara, the 
storm-centre of the south, and in the early stages of the war the 
seat of government of President Juarez. The assault was one 
of the most bloody, as well as one of the most important in its 
results, in the history of the war. 

When the victor entered the town at the head of his troops 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 227 

he was welcomed in a frenzy of joy by the clergy and aristocracy, 
and escorted to the cathedral, where with all the pomp of cele- 
bration and the singing of "God Save the President" he was 
proclaimed President of the Republic. 

At the same time the garrison of Mexico City had risen in 
revolt against the self-appointed President Zuloaga, and had 
proclaimed its allegiance to the "Young Maccabee." The new 
President, however, seemed to have little taste for the civil 
office. War was his trade. Arriving in Mexico City after a 
rapid march from Guadalajara, he formally refused the pres- 
idency, sought out Zuloaga, who was hiding from the soldiery, 
restored him to power, and then, organizing a picked body of 
troops, marched on Vera Cruz, the seat of the Juarez govern- 
ment. He was not destined, however, to repeat his triumph of 
Guadalajara. Juarez inflicted upon him a crushing defeat, and 
he returned to Mexico City with his army broken and demor- 
alized. Again he organized a picked force and went against 
Vera Cruz and again was defeated. 

In the meantime the Constitutionalists had been steadily 
gaining ground throughout the country. Already the states of 
Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, 
Michoacan, Baja California, Durango, Sinaloa, Tlascala, 
Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, Zacatecas, 
Aguas Calientes, and Vera Cruz were under their control, and 
only the states of San Luis Potosi, Puebla, Queretaro, Guana- 
juato, Jalisco, and Mexico remained in the hands of the reac- 
tionaries, and even these were already invaded. Closing in 
from all sides upon Mexico City, the Constitutionalists finally 
made a fierce attack upon Tacubaya, one of its suburbs. Here, 
however, they were repulsed by Leonardo Marquez. The 
encounter was made notorious by the order of the "Young Mac- 
cabee, " delivered to Leonardo Marquez, to kill all the prisoners 
of war, including a number of doctors and medical students from 
the School of Medicine at Mexico City who had gone to the 
fight to care for the wounded on both sides. 



228 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

In spite of an occasional victory such as this of Tacubaya 
the reactionary army was rapidly losing ground; and the strong, 
steady advance of the Constitutionalists, north, south, east, and 
west, showed that the end was near. So sure of speedy and 
complete victory was President Juarez that on November 6, 
1860, he issued a call to the country for a congressional and presi- 
dential election to take place within the following two months. 

On the 20th of the same month occurred the final and deci- 
sive conflict of the war. The Constitutionalist army of sixteen 
thousand men, under Gonzalez Ortega, utterly routed the re- 
actionary army of eight thousand men and thirty pieces of 
artillery, under Miramon, in the hills of San Miguel Calpul- 
alpan close to Mexico City. The shattered remnants of the 
defeated army fled in disorder to the city, thence to the hills, 
not before, however, the alert Miramon had seized by force 
from the English legation some sixty thousand dollars which 
had been deposited there for the payment of the interest on the 
English credit. Five days later the Constitutionalist army 
entered the capital, and on the 11th of January, 1861, President 
Juarez and his cabinet reestablished constitutional rule in 
Mexico. 

The first act of the constitutional government was to expel 
from the country the high prelates and foreign representatives 
directly responsible for the recent civil war. 

Having cleansed the country of its more potent adversaries, 
the government bowed itself to the tremendous task of rebuild- 
ing the ruined and desolated country. The reactionary army, 
headed by Felix Zuloaga who still assumed the title of President 
of the Republic, was shattered and broken but not altogether 
vanquished. In various parts of the country its operations 
continued to be a source of trouble, and the government had to 
begin its painful and laborious work of reconstruction in a yet 
incompletely pacified state of society. 

Fifty-two years of alternate master-class anarchy and working- 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 229 

class revolution, coupled with a foreign war and three armed 
invasions, culminating in the recent three years of bloody inter- 
necine strife, had left Mexico in a state of ruin, poverty, and 
paralysis difficult to conceive and impossible to describe. It 
is probable that no civil administration ever faced a more stu- 
pendous or more important task than the government of Juarez 
now faced; it is certain that no administration ever faced its 
task in a spirit more sane, more strong, more illumined with 
genius. Agriculture had almost ceased to exist; industry was 
annihilated; famine ravaged the land. Thousands of strong 
men lay dead; thousands of women wept in bitterness; thou- 
sands of children cried for bread. 

The tremendous vitality of the Mexican people, however, 
stood them in good stead. Under the leadership of Juarez 
they gathered themselves for the great task of reconstruction. 
With a united will, government and people turned from mourn- 
ing and disaster to the inauguration of what — but for the in- 
famous foreign hand — would have been the brightest, most 
promising era in the history of humanity. 

On the 1st of May, 1861, the constitutional Congress opened 
its session for the first time since the cowp d'etat of the unhappy 
Comonfort; and President Juarez, in delivering the greatest 
message ever listened to by a constitutional body, reaffirmed the 
government's policy of the past, outlining its endeavours for 
the future, and voiced, as no man has voiced, the full aspirations 
of a united and determined people. In the course of this mes- 
sage he said: "From that moment [the outbreak of the Clerical 
rebellion] began for the government and the country a new 
epoch filled with difficulties and conflicts. But now the war is 
ended, and it is necessary to again begin our task of reparation 
and reorganization. War and oppression have disorganized 
all things. We have to face complications and difficulties in 
every branch of public administration, from the rural munici- 
pality to the department of foreign affairs. The habit of ob- 
servance to law having been broken, and the jurisdiction of the 



230 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

different officers having been disarranged, this state of affairs 
might seem fraught with menace to our national unity. But, 
thanks to the good sense of the federal states and the consci- 
entiousness and the good-will of the people throughout the 
country, this menace has not arisen, or has been of very little 
account. The federation is now compact, firm, and united 
by constitutional ties and ready to sustain our national institu- 
tions, and to enforce and obey the laws enacted by this sover- 
eign assembly. ... 

"To the different states and territories has been given the 
fullest authority to deal with their particular problems; and all 
the concessions they have required for the benefit of public edu- 
cation, health, and general welfare have been granted them. . . 

"The institutions of public education, the greatest glory of 
our country, from whose well-planted seed will spring the ameli- 
oration of our evils and the uplifting of the Republic, were all 
but destroyed in some places and completely so in others. This 
government believes that one of its first duties is the restoration 
of these institutions. And they have laboured earnestly to the 
end that they be reopened without delay. . . . 

"It is necessary that society procure free development of 
material wealth, and in view of this necessity, well understood 
by the Executive, adequate measures have been taken for the con- 
struction by the government of a railroad between Vera Cruz and 
Mexico City and between Chalco and Mexico City. . . . 

"The spirit of enterprise and cooperation has been awakened, 
and for its further development we hold in reserve another 
undertaking for whose execution this government seeks with 
assurance the sanction and support of Congress. . . . 

"The public treasury is in a very depleted condition, but strict 
economy and honest watchfulness in the distribution of public 
money will no doubt replenish it in the future. . . . 

" Great care has been given to the important task of nationalizing 
the former clerical lands, a task from which it has been impossible 
to reap all the results that would accrue under normal conditions^ 



UPHOLDING OF THE CONSTITUTION 231 

owing to the embarrassed position of the government and the turmoil 
of the civil war. . . . 

"Great economies have been effected by the reduction of the 
army by this government's orders. The soldiers who were the 
supporters of oppression and tyranny have been discharged from 
service as unworthy to carry arms for the Republic. . . . 

"Those who have fought for liberty, and who, with great cour- 
age, defended our democratic principles on the battlefield, are 
returning to their homes, but holding themselves ever ready to 
fight for our institutions. ... " 

In these simple, masterly words was expressed the purpose of 
the government — the making and moulding of a new nation in 
the light of a vast understanding. The people saw their own 
collective good sense and political genius reflected back upon 
them by their government, and they entered into the spirit and 
purpose of its plans with all the ardour of a full accord. A rem- 
nant there was — as there must be in all societies born and 
reared in the pathological conditions of the class struggle — who 
were too depressed to rise, too debased to respond to the high 
energies of their fellows, too maimed in mind to appreciate the 
new order, too crippled inspirit to take advantage of their liberty. 
These still clung to their servitude and delivered themselves 
up an apathetic prey to the old superstitions. 

The strong, however, and they were in the vast majority, 
entered with a will upon the exercise of their new-found freedom 
and economic independence. The land was there — the land 
for which they had fought for fifty years — and they laid hold 
of it in a spirit of energy and promise. Their title was full and 
unimpeachable, a title whose terms aroused their manhood, and 
gave them the fullest self-respect — "To every man as much 
land as he can make productive." It was not to be expected 
that these things should come to instant perfection. But the 
whole institution of society in Mexico had been lifted bodily 
from the vicious vortex of chaos and contradiction, and placed 
on the open road to an unending progressive development. 



232 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Society had been started right; as it gathered way, its onward 
course was bound by all dynamic law to become more direct, 
more purposeful and powerful, and to draw all halting, contra- 
dictory elements into its wake. In the brief space of the Juarez 
regime before the foreign hand laid foul hold upon this splendid 
infant democracy, at least a million peons became independent 
farmers upon their own land. Had they been given time to 
firmly establish, foster, and mature their nascent institutions, 
they would have swept the remnants of reaction from the land, 
and have founded an unique agrarian democracy, upon whose 
foundations must have arisen the first great industrial democracy 
of the world. But this triumph of the social man, which found 
expression in the Constitution of 1857, was a menace to the ex- 
ploiting capitalist class of Europe and the United States, a 
menace more bitter than was the French Revolution to the old 
feudality. Had it survived and flourished it would have vindi- 
cated the power of the people to govern themselves. It would 
have illustrated the splendour of human happiness and progress 
that can be achieved, and must be achieved, by a community 
whose political institutions are based upon Man Right, and whose 
social institutions are based upon economic equality. So fair 
a thing could not be permitted to live by the capitalist powers 
that governed and still govern our complex barbarism — mis- 
named civilization. It was a moral rebuke to their squalor 
of soul, a summons to heights beyond their reach, a denunciation 
of their cherished system of exploitation, a rising menace to their 
power, an atheism to their Moloch of Property, and — most 
important of all — a tocsin to their own hardly suppressed 
proletarian revolutions. It had to he destroyed. 

On the 11th of June, 1861, Juarez was proclaimed constitu- 
tional President of Mexico, and on the 31st of October of the 
same year, France, England, and Spain signed a compact in 
London pledging themselves to a joint invasion of Mexico for 
the purpose of overthrowing the constitutional government, and 
establishing in its place a monarchy, supported by bayonets. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE FEENCH INTERVENTION OF 1861-1865 

THE one preponderant cause which led to the intervention 
of Europe in Mexico, in connivance with the United States, has 
been already defined in the preceding chapter. A second fun- 
damental cause of intervention is to be found in the struggle for 
commercial supremacy in the Latin-American market which 
had sprung up between Europe and the United States, after 
Mexico and the Spanish colonies of Central and South America 
had conquered their independence from Spain, and opened their 
ports to the trade of the world. By the year 1861 the struggle 
had already become acute; and the European manufacturers 
and shippers, alarmed by the tremendous industrial advance 
of the United States, were eager to support any policy which 
would checkmate the influence of so formidable a rival in the 
Latin-American republics. 

The spokesman of this powerful element in Europe was the 
petty bourgeois Napoleon III. Possessed of a mania for im- 
perial expansion, the Emperor was already revelling in visions of 
a monarchist Latin America — the abject commercial slave of 
France. His Gargantuan ambition not only contemplated the 
establishment of a monarchy in Mexico subservient to France, 
not only contemplated the subsequent establishment of a 
chain of similar monarchies throughout Central and South 
America, but even contemplated the permanent seizure of 
the State of Sonora and the State of Baja (lower) California for 
the sake of their gold mines, and as a base of operations for the 
future conquest of the United States! It is no wonder then 

233 



234 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

that international capitalism, the Clerical party in Mexico, the 
Papal See, and the disgruntled European manufacturers and 
shippers, saw in the "Little Napoleon" the deus ex machina who 
would serve all their allied ambitions in serving his own, who 
would crush the dangerous Mexican democracy, restore the 
power of the Church, and checkmate the commercial encroach- 
ments of the United States. 

To Napoleon III and the French army, therefore, was en- 
trusted the sacred mission of Europe to destroy the new-born 
Mexican democracy. The United States, not suflSciently 
astute to recognize the ultimate import of such an intervention 
to herself, played into the hands of Europe. 

In spite of the gross misconception of Mexican affairs which 
existed in Europe and the United States in 1861 — a miscon- 
ception which has persisted to recent times — it required all the 
glamour of papal bulls, the proclamations of the false President, 
the calumnies of the Mexican monarchist agents, and all the 
outcries of a foreign prostituted press and pulpit, to trap the 
common people of England, France, and Spain into acquies- 
cence in the policy of intervention. To the Catholics of France 
and Spain the expedition of the allies against Mexico was made 
to appear a "holy war," a crusade against the sacrilegious ene- 
mies of God; to the British Protestants it was made to appear 
an act of mercy undertaken solely for the purpose of saving the 
Latin- American races from absorption by the United States. 

As far back as 1855 Lord Palmers ton, the English Secretary 
of Foreign Affairs, had agreed with Napoleon to offer the 
crown of Mexico to the Due d'Aumale. That plan, however, 
failed, and the powers were compelled to fall back upon the 
second choice, Maximilian of Hapsburg, brother of Franz 
Joseph, Emperor of Austria. 

After much vacillation Maximilian finally consented to be 
enthroned Emperor of Mexico by the allied armies of inter- 
vention, on condition that France pledge herself to support him 
with her army, and continue to do so until such time as he could 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 235 

firmly entrench himself in power. By the year 1861 the plan 
was fully rounded out, and all preparations had been made for 
its execution. It now only remained for the powers to find or 
invent some popular pretext for intervention, one at least suffi- 
ciently plausible to appease the conscience of the nations. 

For the reasons previously stated the United States had 
maintained an attitude of non-committal connivance toward the 
European policy of intervention in Mexico, partly influenced, 
no doubt, by her feeling of impotence pending the inevitable 
convulsion of her own approaching civil war. The outbreak 
of hostilities between the North and the South now convinced 
Europe that it would be beyond the power of the United States 
to change her policy even if she would. Thus the road was 
clear to intervention and the establishment of a monarchy in 
Mexico. The "Little Napoleon " indeed saw in events the most 
favourable portents for the accomplishment of his dream of 
subjugating even the United States. 

Quick action was necessary. Still no adequate pretext could 
be found. At this moment, however, Juarez addressed a note 
to the English, French, and Spanish ministers in Mexico City 
informing them that in view oi the recent civil war in Mexico, 
and the consequent disorganization of the national finances, his 
government deemed it necessary and unavoidable to withhold 
the payment of the interest on the foreign credits for a period of 
two years. There was no attempt at repudiation; merely a 
request for forbearance on the part of the powers in view of 
Mexico's stricken condition. It seems incredible to the un- 
prejudiced mind that this act of common business procedure, 
well within the generally accepted rules of international finance, 
should have been made the pretext for intervention. The fact 
remains that it was. Europe was eager to act; some pretext 
must be found; and why might not this serve as well as another.^ 

Accordingly, with a grave parade of outraged dignity, 
the English, French, and Spanish ministers, acting under orders 
from their home governments, broke off all communication 



236 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

with the Mexican Government and left the country. This was 
immediately followed, as we have said, on the 31st of October, 
1861, by the signing of the convention for intervention by the 
representatives of England, France, and Spain assembled in 
London. The principal articles of this convention, which, it 
must be remembered, was but a thin covering to the real pur- 
pose of international capitalism, were as follows : 

Article I. Her Majesty the Queen of Spain, his Majesty the 
Emperor of the French, and her Majesty the Queen of the 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, bind themselves, 
upon the signing of this convention, immediately to give the 
necessary orders for sending to Mexico naval and military 
forces combined in sufl&cient numbers to take and occupy all the 
fortresses and military posts of Mexico. . . . 

Article 11. The high contracting parties are not endeavouring 
to impose any form of government in Mexico. . . . 

Article HI. A committee of three, representing each high 
contracting party, shall decide all questions in regard to the 
distribution of the money collected in Mexico for the payment 
of the claims due to each high contracting party. . . . 

Article IV. ... It being known that the United States 
also has claims against Mexico, she will be invited to take part 
in this intervention. . . . London, October 31, 1861. 
(Signed) Zavier Isturiz. (Seal.) 
(Signed) Flahaut. (Seal.) 
(Signed) Russell. (Seal.) 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE UNITED STATES 

The invitation to the United States to participate in this 
intervention and the refusal of that country to join with the 
powers in invading Mexico deserve the most careful considera- 
tion in view of the commonly accepted opinions now entertained 
in the United States, wltk regard, to. the, whole affair. History 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 237 

has created a tradition to the effect that the United States Gov- 
ernment looked with profound disfavour upon intervention by 
the European powers, and would have defended the sister Re- 
public to the south had it not been for the civil war at home. 
This tradition further represents the departure of the French 
from Mexico in 1865 as the result of the policy of the United 
States, then freed from the domestic conflict and ready to render 
that aid to Mexico which would have been given in 1861 if 
necessity had not prevented. The leading facts cited in support 
of this tradition are President Lincoln's offer to assume Mexico's 
financial obligations to Europe for six years, and his unwavering 
recognition of Juarez as the constitutional executive of the 
Mexican Republic. 

This tradition deserves the most rigid examination. It is 
true that the United States did recognize Juarez as the constitu- 
tional President, but it must be remembered that Juarez had 
promptly complied with a request from Secretary Seward asking 
him to refrain from recognizing the new Confederate slave re- 
public. To have thrown the Mexican Republic into the arms 
of the Confederacy would have been poor diplomacy in view of 
the geographical relations of the two countries. Recognizing 
Juarez was making a virtue out of a practical necessity. 

As to the second fact brought forward in support of the tra- 
dition — namely, that the Government of the United States 
generously offered to assume Mexico's European obligations in 
order to spare her from the ordeal of invasion — it is necessary 
to consider the nature of that offer and the circumstances con- 
nected with it. In response to pleading representations made 
by the Mexican Republic to the government at Washington, 
the latter communicated with its Minister in Mexico City as 
follows: "The President ardently wishes that the political 
status of Mexico as an independent nation will be maintained. 
The events you communicate have alarmed him upon this sub- 
ject, and he believes that the people of the United States will not 
consider him just if an effort is not made to impede such a calanx- 



238 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

ity in this continent as will be the extinction of a republic. He 
has decided to authorize you to negotiate a treaty with the Republic 
of Mexico by which the Government of the United States will assume 
the payment of the interest of the 3 per cent, consolidated debt which 
that country owes to the owners of the Mexican bonds, which debt 
is figured out to be nearly sixty-two million pesos, for the term of 
five years from the date of the decree given by the Mexican Govern- 
ment suspending that payment, on the condition that that govern- 
ment undertakes to pay to the United States for the reimbursement 
of the money loaned an interest of 6 per cent., warranting such pay- 
ment with specific retention upon all public lands, and upon the 
mines in the different Mexican states of Lower California, Chihua- 
hua, Sonora, and Sinaloa, these mortgaged properties to fall under 
the absolute domain of the United States at the end of the term of six 
years counted since the signing of this treaty, if the said reimburse- 
ment has not taken place during that term.^ The circumstances, 
which are as new as extraordinary, make necessary this determin- 
ation because the Mexican crisis does not permit any delay, ""j" 

In order to understand the Mexican's point of view on this 
transaction, it is necessary to examine a few additional facts 
which lie on the surface of things. The exhausted financial 
condition of the Mexican people after fifty years of struggle for 
democracy and independence was well known in the United 
States. It must have been known that if Mexico could not pay 
3 per cent., which was the rate fixed on her European loans, for 
the next two years, much less could she afford to pay 6 per cent, 
on the entire amount to the United States and fulfil the contract 
within the allotted six years. Must not the capitalist advisers 
who swarmed around the Government of the United States after 
the triumph of the Republican party — the party of protective 



*Translated from " Mexico a traves de los Siglos." 

fThe public lands referred to consisted of vast areas widely distributed 
throughout the various states, while the immense mineral deposits of Chihuahua, 
Sonora, Sinaloa, and Lower California constituted Mexico's greatest national 
asset. 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 239 

interests, railway interests, and high finance* — must they not 
have known that Mexico could not meet those Shy lockian terms 
and that the cession of the precious lands and mines to the 
United States would be the inevitable outcome of the contract 
if once signed? Whatever may have been the personal views 
of Lincoln, the Great Liberator, those high in authority with 
him must have looked upon the contract as an ultimate triumph 
for American capitalism in Mexico. At all events, the patriotic 
Mexican, contemplating the long history of American aggression 
in Mexico, will hardly be persuaded that this was anything more 
than a new conspiracy to seize more territory and natural re- 
sources in Mexico. The impartial student will admit that it 
partook of the nature of a usurer's proposition to a poverty- 
stricken applicant. 

So much for the "facts" commonly brought to support the 
tradition of the "friendly" interest of the United States in Mex- 
ico in the great trials of 1861-1865. Now we may inquire 
whether the diplomatic notes sent out by Mr. Seward indicate 
deep solicitude on the part of the United States to prevent 
European interference. To the United States Minister at 
Vienna Mr. Seward wrote: "The United States is not indiffer- 
ent to the events that are occurring in Mexico. They are re- 
garded, however, as incidents of the war between France and 
Mexico." To the United States Minister at Paris Mr. Seward 
wrote: "The United States has neither the right nor the dis- 
position to intervene by force in the internal affairs of Mexico, 
whether to establish or retain a republic, or even a democratic 
government there, or to overthrow an imperial or foreign one, 
if Mexico chooses to establish or accept it." In the presence of 
the Minister of Spain in the United States, Seiior Tesara, Mr. 
Seward officially recognized "that Spain had the right to make 
war on Mexico in order to protect her rights and to obtain repa- 
ration for her grievances."! 

*W. A. Dunning, "Reconstruction: Political and Economic." 
tZamacois, "Historia de Mejico," Vol. 15, p. 809. 



240 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Finally we may examine the other element of the tradition 
— namely, that the friendly interposition of the United States 
forced the withdrawal of the French troops. It is true that Mr. 
Seward sent some rather mild mandatory notes to Napoleon 
III in reference to the withdrawal of his army, but this was 
eighteen months after the latter had made arrangements for 
that withdrawal in view of the serious losses and the menacing 
attitude of Germany. To deal with this latter point somewhat 
more precisely : On the 10th of April, 1864, Napoleon signed the 
treaty of Miramar in which he signified his intention of with- 
drawing his army from Mexico by instalments, beginning in the 
year 1865. On the 11th of September, 1865, Messrs. John Corliss 
& Co., bankers of New York, furnished the Mexican Government 
with the first instalment of a loan of $30,000,000 at 6 per cent. 
On October, 1865, Napoleon III sent a note to his Minister in 
Washington undertaking to withdraw from Mexico if Maxi- 
milian were recognized by the United States Government — a 
childish attempt to "play politics," in view of the fact that he 
had already determined to withdraw his army, and indeed had 
withdrawn a considerable portion of it. On December 6, 1865, 
Mr. Seward replied to this note in the following mild terms: 
" . . . I believe the cause of the discontent produced in the 
United States by the occupation of Mexico has not been well 
understood by the government of the Emperor. The main rea- 
son for this discontent is not for the presence of a foreign army 
in Mexico, and much less that it is the French army; we 
recognize the right of the nations to make war among themselves 
as long as our rights and our just influence are not attacked. The 
real reason of the discontent of the United States consists in the 
fact that the French army in invading Mexico is attacking a 
republican government. . . ." In January, 1866, Napo- 
leon officially announced in the French Chamber that the army 
would be withdrawn from Mexico. The sequence of dates tell 
their own tale. Mr. Seward's apologetic note could hardly be 
supposed to be responsible for "driving the French out of Mex- 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 241 

ico.'* The fact is that the United States throughout the war of 
intervention acted in complete diplomatic subservience to the policy 
of Napoleon III, only mildly changing her tone when the French 
army was already retiring from Mexico, and Wall Street had be- 
come financially interested in the support of the Juarez government. 

THE WAR OF INTERVENTION 

On the 2nd of January, 1862, the fleets of the three aUies en- 
tered the harbour of Vera Cruz. Spain was represented by six 
thousand soldiers and twenty-six warships and transports; 
France by three thousand soldiers and eleven warships, and 
England by a thousand men and seven warships. The relative 
insignificance of the English contingent showed that England 
proposed merely a formal participation in the intervention. 
Europe indeed had agreed to give France and Spain a free hand 
in Mexico, and England's support was simply moral and dip- 
lomatic. 

The invasion, of course, meant the suspension of all social 
reconstruction for the Mexican people. They had conquered 
for themselves liberty and a democratic constitution in the 
teeth of the Clerical party; they had now to defend their entire 
programme of reform against all Europe. The recent civil 
war had left them exhausted and famine stricken. With scarcely 
a pause they had now to enter upon a still more desperate and 
prolonged conflict; and the fact that the Constitutionalists 
in this war held at bay the vastly superior combined army of the 
French and Mexican reactionaries for more than three years, 
and then proceeded slowly but surely to drive them out of the 
country, is a remarkable proof of Mexican valour and vitality. 

It was an effort and an achievement to which no modern 
nation can bring a parallel, but it left Mexico in a state of pa- 
ralysis and degeneracy from which she has not recovered to this 
day. The most energetic and valiant spirits of a nation cannot 
be persistently destroyed through fifty years of struggle, cul- 



242 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

minating in three devastating wars, without leaving a terrible 
mark on succeeding generations. The breed of Juarez is all but 
destroyed from Mexico; in that lies her acutest problem; in that 
lies the crime of the Church, of the United States, and of Europe 
against her. 

With rare wisdom Juarez met the invading host, courteously 
withdrew the Mexican garrison from Vera Cruz, and placed the 
city at their disposal. "Under the adverse circumstances in 
which the Republic found itself, all the efforts of the government 
were turned toward the dissolution of the compact between 
the three nations whose combined action was a death-threat to 
her national existence. To this end it was necessary to prevent 
an armed conflict which, no matter what might be its results, 
undoubtedly would only arouse the obstinacy of the belligerents 
and precipitate a struggle whose end no man could foresee. 
This policy was highly diplomatic and gave a very beneficial 
result." (" Mexico, a traves de los Siglos," Vol. 5, p. 489.) 

The first act of the allies was to send a deputation to President 
Juarez to obtain satisfaction for the claims made by them — a 
highly significant procedure, in that it amounted to a practical 
recognition of the constitutional government. Juarez replied 
to the deputation with firmness and honesty in the same words 
he had used in previous negotiations with the European pow- 
ers, expressing his willingness to recognize all justifiable claims 
against his government, and to meet the interest upon those 
claims as soon as the financial condition of the country warranted. 

In the meantime the forces of the allies were beginning to 
suffer severely from the unheal thful climate of Vera Cruz, and 
Juarez with characteristic magnanimity and hospitality placed 
the hill towns of Tehuacan, Orizaba, and Cordoba at their dis- 
posal, on condition that they withdrew to Vera Cruz in the 
event of the outbreak of hostilities. The commissioners from 
Spain, France, and England — General Prim, Dubois de Sa- 
ligny, and C. Lennox Wyke — now made formal demands for 
the recognition of their claims by the Mexican Government, 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 243 

and President Juarez accordingly oflicially recognized in favour 
of England a debt of $69,311,657; in favour of Spain a debt of 
$9,460,086, and in favour of France a debt of $200,000. The 
English and Spanish commissioners expressed themselves fully 
satisfied with this arrangement, and shortly afterward withdrew 
their forces from Mexico and returned to their respective countries. 

The matter requires some little explanation. So far as Eng- 
land was concerned her parade of intervention had been a mere 
formality. Lord Palmerston, the most astute Foreign Secretary 
Great Britain ever possessed, saw in the egomania of Napoleon 
and the bourgeois imperialism of the Third Empire a suitable 
and adequate tool for the destruction of the Mexican democracy. 
He foresaw the affair was liable to be odious in the extreme to 
the already seething proletariat of Great Britain and the Con- 
tinent, and he wisely refrained from identifying his government 
with it. 

Spain, on the other hand, was saved from sharing the disgrace 
of active intervention solely by the personal valour and integrity 
of her commissioner. General Prim. This remarkable man had 
risen by sheer ability from the position of a Catalan peasant to 
the supreme command of the Spanish army. By the prompt 
repression of several home insurrections, as well as by a bril- 
liantly successful campaign against the Moors, he had earned 
the favour of the tottering Spanish monarchy, while his Liberal 
ideas and striking personality made him equally popular with 
people. To such a man the conspiracy of Europe to strangle 
the Mexican democracy was utterly repellent; and as soon as he 
had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the real position 
of affairs in Mexico, and had received President Juarez's recogni- 
tion of the Spanish debt, he withdrew his forces and returned 
to Spain — to face disgrace and discharge for his loyalty to his 
own convictions and the cause of the people. 

But if England and Spain withdrew from the intervention, 
Napoleon III was the more eager to exercise his now unrestricted 
power, and accomplish his purpose of establishing a monarchy 
in Mexico. To that end the French Commissioner, Dubois de 



244 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Saligny, proceeded to make himself as obnoxious as possible to 
the Mexican Government. He scoffed in the most insolent 
manner at the claim of $200,000, recognized by Juarez as the 
lawful indebtedness of Mexico to France, protesting that the 
amount of that indebtedness was $12,000,000, basing his pro- 
test on the fact that Miramon had contracted a loan of $75,000, 
from Jecker, Torre & Co., French- Jewish bankers, signing in 
return a note for $12,000,000! In plain view of the fact that 
Miramon was a rebel, and as such no constitutional government 
could hold itself responsible for his actions or his debts, the reiter- 
ation of this claim could only be taken by the Juarez government 
as a declaration of war. 

During the course of these negotiations those birds of ill omen, 
the Clerical leaders, Miramon, Almonte, Haro y Tamariz, 
Father Miranda, and others, began to return from Europe and 
to congregate in Vera Cruz under the protection of the French 
flag. Almonte indeed brought with him authorization from 
Maximilian to organize the reactionary forces, and from the 
safety of Vera Cruz proceeded to send out commissions to all 
parts of the country for the appointment of officers in the army 
of the soi-disant emperor. 

Under these circumstances President Juarez requested Dubois 
de Saligny to withdraw the French troops from the hill towns 
to Vera Cruz, according to the treaty of Soledad. Saligny, in a 
manner worthy of his master, Napoleon III, refused. From 
that moment the war began in earnest. After a series of skir- 
mishes and minor encounters between the French and Mexican 
armies. General Laurencez, the commander-in-chief of the French 
army, with six thousand men and seven parks of artillery, ad- 
vanced upon Puebla. Here, on the outskirts of the city, he was 
met by a small force of some thirty-seven hundred Mexicans and 
severely repulsed. 

While the blood of French mercenaries and Mexican patriots 
mingled on the ground, three thousand miles away Napoleon 
III, reclining at ease, was explaining the whole matter to his 
confidant, General Foray : " There will be people who will ask 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 245 

us why we are going to waste lives and money in order to place 
an Austrian prince upon the throne of Mexico. In the actual 
conditions of the world's civilization the prosperity of the United 
States market is by no means a matter of indifference to Europe, 
because it feeds our industry and gives life to our trade. We 
may be interested in the prosperity of the Republic of the 
United States, but we have no intention of allowing them to 
overpower the Gulf of Mexico, thence to extend their control to 
the Antilles and South America, and to become the sole master 
of the markets of the New World. Owner of Mexico, and in 
consequence of Central America and of the pass between the 
two seas, there will be only one power in America, and that will 
be the United States. If, on the contrary, Mexico, having made 
the conquest of her independence, can retain the integrity of 
her territory; if by the aid of the French arms she can maintain 
a stable government, then we shall have built up an impassable 
barrier against the invasion of the United States; we shall have 
maintained the independence of our colonies in the Antilles, and 
also those of ungrateful Spain; we shall have extended our benefi- 
cent influence to Central America, and this influence will ex- 
tend gradually to the north and to the south, opening immense 
markets for our productions, and give to us the raw material for 
our industries. In regard to the prince who will be placed upon 
the throne of Mexico, he will be compelled to act always for the 
benefit of the interests of France, not only by reason of gratitude, 
but because the citizens of his new country are with us, and he 
will be maintained there only through our influence. In this 
way our military honour, the interests of our policy, the interests 
of our industry and our trade, all impose upon us the duty of 
marching upon the capital of Mexico, there to raise up our flag 
audaciously and to establish a monarchy that may suit the 
national sentiment of the country, or for that matter any other 
form of government that may prove beneficial to our inter- 
ests. . . ."* 



*" Mexico a traves de los Siglos," Vol. 5, p. 548, 



246 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The disaster of Puebla taught Napoleon III that the task 
before him was not so simple as he had anticipated. He now 
found himself compelled to send reinforcements to the number 
of 20,000 men, and to mulct the French nation in the sum of 
$15,000,000 for the expenses of the campaign. On the other 
hand, the Liberal government continued to hold its own against 
not only the French forces, but against the considerable army of 
Mexican reactionaries, by this time fully organized and equipped. 
With the arrival of reinforcements the French army advanced 
once more upon Puebla, the 22d day of March, 1862, exactly 
one year after their first repulse. Before the opening of the 
siege the American and Prussian vice-consuls requested General 
Foray, the commander-in-chief of the French forces, to permit 
the women and children and non-combatants to leave the city. 
The request was refused. For fifty-six days the heroic defend- 
ers kept the invaders at bay. Finally, the town in ruins, food 
supplies and ammunition exhausted, they surrendered, and, 
refusing parole, were sent as prisoners of war to France. 

The fall of Puebla — the gateway to the capital — was a seri- 
ous blow to the constitutional government. Mexico City was 
in no position to withstand a long siege, nor was it good policy 
for the patriot army to risk a second serious reverse at this stage 
of the war. Juarez, therefore, very wisely withdrew his forces, 
and removed his seat of government to San Luis Potosi. Ac- 
cordingly, on the 10th of June, 1862, the French army entered 
Mexico City without striking a blow. 

Ten days later General Foray appointed a "Junta de Gobi- 
erno," or "governing junta," to act as the provisional national 
authority, composed of the leading monarchist conspirators 
— Juan Almonte, Pelagio Antonio de Labastido, Archbishop 
of Mexico, and General Mariano Salas. The first activity of 
the junta was to issue a manifesto to the people which concluded 
with the following words : " At last the freedom of the Catholic 
religion is reestablished. The Church will exercise her authority 
without having an enemy in the government, and the State in 




Photograph by Brown Bros. 
MEXICAN PLANTER AND PEON 
The peon is quick to learn and has considerable mechanical ability whenever 
given a chance to develop along his own lines 




CULTIVATION OF HENNEQUIN, YUCATAN 

"Their (the government's) method was to round them (the Yaaui.^ ,m 

with . • cavalry, ship them like cattle -men, women and chilS to 

\ucatan and there to sell them to the hennequii planters adSeXlh^ 

most brutal class of men in the world" (See page 323) admittedly the 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 247 

alliance with the Church will solve the serious questions which 
are pending." A few days later they appointed some two 
hundred leading ecclesiastics, military chieftains, and landed 
aristocrats as a national council, or "junta de Notables," as it 
was called, *'to express the national aspirations in the matter 
of choosing a new form of government." The "junta de Nota- 
bles" immediately set about their task of voicing "the national 
aspirations" and issued almost immediately a proclamation 
worded as follows: 

"1. The Mexican nation adopts as a form of government 
hereditary monarchy of a Catholic prince. 

"2. The sovereign will take the title of Emperor of 
Mexico. 

"3. The imperial crown of Mexico is offered to his Highness 
the Prince Fernando Maximiliano, Archduke of Austria, for 
himself and his descendants. 

"4. In the event that through unforeseen circumstances the 
Archduke Fernando Maximiliano be unable to take possession 
of the throne offered to him, the Mexican nation will submit it- 
self to the benevolence of his majesty Napoleon III, Emperor of 
the French, for the appointment of another Catholic prince." 

In pursuance of this policy, a committee, consisting of Jose 
Maria Gutierrez Estrada, Jose Hidalgo, Tomas Murphy, and 
Father Francisco Miranda, the veterans of the monarchist 
conspiracy, was thereupon dispatched to Austria to offer the 
throne to Maximilian. 

By this time the forces of intervention had reached the con- 
siderable numerical strength of fifty thousand men, of whom 
thirty -five thousand were French regulars and fifteen thousand 
Mexican reactionaries. But by no means can they be said to 
have established themselves in Mexico; they controlled only the 
immediate vicinity of the cities which they occupied. Vera 
Cruz, Puebla, and Mexico City, and a few inconsiderable 



248 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

places in the surrounding territory. Even here they were 
daily beset and harassed beyond measure by the Liberal patri- 
ots. They moved, an army of embarrassed aliens, among a 
nation of enemies; for the whole Mexican people, as distin- 
guished from the ecclesiastics and military and hired mercena- 
ries, remained devotedly loyal to the constitutional government. 
The imperialists, indeed, clearly foresaw that so long as the 
organized power of the national Liberal government remained, 
their efforts would be futile, and they accordingly concentrated 
all their attention on the capture of the President and his cab- 
inet. Juarez, however, was fully alive to the danger, and by 
continuously changing his seat of government, successfully eluded 
the forces sent against him. 

Maximilian meanwhile had consented "to sacrifice himself for 
the happiness of Mexico, and reluctantly to accept the emperor- 
ship,'* and on the 12th of December, 1864, he entered Mexico 
City accompanied by his wife, "the Empress." At last the 
long-cherished dream of the Church was realized — at what 
cost in blood and tears, in anguish and bitterness, these pages 
have endeavoured to attest. 

The Church was intoxicated with joy. She saw before her an 
eternally unfolding supremacy, uninterrupted golden ages of 
plunder. With a foreign army and a monarch-puppet at her 
command, she stood at last on the pinnacle of her ambition. 
But the long expected fulfilment was destined to be of short 
duration. The Church knew it not, but the reign of the Priest 
had passed from Mexico forever. 

The character of the two leading figures in this notorious 
rape of democracy — the folly of the one, the brutality and ava- 
rice of the other, may be fittingly judged in the following treaty 
drawn up and signed by them as a compact of partnership. 
That Maximilian was no match for his master. Napoleon III, 
in the matter of driving a bargain, and that both of them re- 
garded Mexico simply as a field for unlimited brigandage, is 
clear Iv attested in every line of the document quoted below: 



FRENCH INTERVENTION ^49 

"I. The French troops which are already in Mexico shall be 
reduced as soon as possible to twenty-five thousand men, in- 
cluding the foreign legion. 

"II. The French troops shall leave Mexico as soon as his 
Majesty the Emperor Maximilian shall be able to organize the 
necessary forces to replace them. 

"III. The foreign legion at the command of France, consist- 
ing of eight thousand men, shall remain in Mexico for six years 
after the withdrawal of the French army, remaining in the pay 
of the Mexican Emperor. . . . 

"VII. For the necessary transportation of the French troops 
army transports will make the voyage between France and Vera 
Cruz every two months, and these shall be paid for by Mexico at 
the rate of four hundred thousand francs for each trip of each 
transport. 

"VIII. From the French naval station in the Antilles and in 
the Pacific Ocean warships will frequently be sent to Mexican 
seaports to display the French flag. 

" IX. The expenses of the French expedition to Mexico shall be 
paid by Mexico at once, and these are fixed at the amount of two 
hundred and seventy million francs for the whole period ending in 
July, 1864-' This indemnity shall bear an interest of 3 per cent, per 
annum. From the first of July, 1864, the expenses of the army shall 
be met by Mexico. 

"X. The indemnity which it is agreed shall be paid to France 
by Mexico for salary, food, and maintenance of the French 
troops after the first of July, 1864, is fixed at the amount of a 
thousand francs annually per man. 

"XI. Mexico will pay immediately to the French Government 
the amount of sixty-six million francs in bonds, which will include 
fifty-four million francs of the debt mentioned in Article IX. together 
with twelve million francs in instalments due to French citizens. 

"XII. As extra pay for war expenses Mexico shall pay annu- 
ally to France the amount of twenty-five million francs. 

"XIII. The Imperial Government of Mexico shall pay at the 



250 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

end of each month to the general 'paymaster of the army the total 
amount due to he paid to the army according to Article X. 
' "XIV. The army shall be reduced annually as follows : 28,000 
men in 1865; 25,000 men in 1866; 20,000 men in 1867. 

Given in the Palace of Miramar on the 10th of April, 1864. 

Signed in the name of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. 
— Herbert. 

In the name of Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. — Joaquin 
Velasquez de Leon." 

The full significance of this treaty will become more apparent 
if we glance for a moment at the sequence of events whence it 
was evolved. The allied armies landed at Vera Cruz on the 2d 
of January, 1862. It was not until the following 22d of March, 

1862, that the French forces made their first assault on Puebla, 
and not until one year and fifty-six days later, the 18th of May, 

1863, that the city finally fell into their hands, opening their 
way to the unresisted occupation of Mexico City on the follow- 
ing 10th of June, 1863. From this last date, the 10th of June, 
1863, to the 10th of April, 1864, the date of the signing of the 
treaty of Miramar, ten months had passed, and the imperialistic 
forces had done little more than hold their own. Napoleon, 
therefore, by this time had realized the task he had before him 
was no child's play. While still talking loudly of success he 
undoubtedly recognized imminent possibilities of failure. His 
aim, therefore, in this treaty was to wring from Mexico the larg- 
est possible loot in the shortest space of time, and to relieve him- 
self of any responsibility for the further conduct of the war, 
when it should become indubitably profitless and unsuccessful, 
by arranging for the entire withdrawal of the French army in 
three yearly instalments, to begin in the year 1865, only ten 
months after the signing of this treaty, and, as it proved, only a 
month or two after Maximilian and his wife entered Mexico City 
as Emperor and Empress of Mexico, December 12, 1864. The 
following year (1865) Napoleon found it necessary to induce the 
French Government to disburse another vast sum for the further 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 251 

conduct of the campaign. The amount accredited to Maxi- 
milian on this occasion was 250,000,000 francs. Very little of 
this, however, reached Mexico, the greater part of it remaining 
in the imperial pocket. Mexico's indebtedness to France of 
270,000,000 francs, according to the terms of the treaty of Mira- 
mar, was thus increased by 250,000,000 francs, giving a total of 
520,000,000 francs, which, reduced to Mexican money — and a 
Mexican peso at that time was at par with the American dollar 
— yielded the enormous figure of $253,000,000, the whole con- 
stituting a very respectable booty for Napoleon III and the 
speculators who formed his entourage. On the other hand, 
Maximilian, before leaving Europe, found it necessary to re- 
plenish his purse, and accordingly raised a loan of £8,000,000. 
The astute English financiers who supplied the loan took full 
advantage of the royal impecuniosity and retained no less than 
90 per cent, of the loan as interest and commission. Thus in order 
that her soi-disant Emperor might enjoy the spending of 
£800,000, Mexico was burdened with a debt of £8,000,000, i. e., 
$40,000,000. This last transaction raised Mexico's foreign debt, 
contracted for her since the intervention, to the enormous 
sum of $293,000,000, bearing an annual interest of $10,000,000. 
And in addition to this, Maximilian from the day that he ac- 
cepted the crown of Mexico at Miramar appropriated to himself 
a salary of $125,000 a month, and an allowance of $16,666 a 
month for his wife, making together a total of $1,700,000 a year; 
while his journey to Mexico cost $500,000, and the wages of his 
cooks and servants $319,000 more. 

From what magic cave was this fabulous wealth to be con- 
jured .^^ From the wealth produced by the social labour of a 
Maximilian, of a Napoleon? From the coffers of the Church 
which had planned intervention and prayed for an emperor.? 
No, it was to be conjured from the toil of the Mexican peons, 
already exhausted and famine-stricken, already in process of 
being robbed of their country, their lands, and their lives to pay 
the price of one emperor and to fill the maw of another. 



252 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

But there was yet another debt the Mexican peons must pay 
— the debt of blood. In the years 1864 and 1865 alone they 
engaged the invaders in no less than four hundred and twenty- 
four pitched battles and skirmishes; and the years 1862 and 
1863 were hardly less bloody. The conservative official estimate 
of the loss of life on both sides during those four years is fifty 
thousand, of which twenty-seven thousand were Mexican 
patriots and twenty-three thousand French soldiers and reaction- 
ary Mexicans. These estimates, however, are not only con- 
servative but grossly misleading. They do not reckon the toll 
of maimed and wounded nor the great numbers who fell in the 
guerilla warfare, nor the host of non-combatants, men, women, 
and children, who died of starvation and misery, or at the hands 
of the murderous reactionary chiefs under the "Decree of 
October 3d."* 

While the struggle between the French invaders and the 
Mexican patriots was at its height a papal delegate arrived at 
the court of Maximilian in Mexico City, bearing rigid instruc- 
tions from his master. Pope Pius IX, "to insure that the govern- 
ment abolished the Leyes de Reforma, and all the laws against 
the sacred rights of the Church; to insure the promulgation of 
laws making full reparation to the Church for the injuries in- 
flicted upon her, and abolishing religious freedom, and making 
full restoration of the clerical wealth and estates.'* These un- 
compromising injunctions to the papal delegate were reinforced 
by a mandatory letter from the Pope to Maximilian himself 
which we quote in full: "Your Majesty is fully aware that in 
order effectually to remedy the wrongs committed against the 
Church by the recent revolution and to restore as soon as possi- 
ble her happiness and prosperity, it is absolutely necessary that 
the Catholic religion, to the exclusion of any other cult, continue 
to be the glory and support of the Mexican nation; that the 
bishops have complete liberty in the exercise of their pastoral 
ministry; that the religious orders be reorganized and reestab- 

*See p. 255. 



FRENCH INTERVENTION 253 

lished, according to the instructions and powers that We have 
given; that the estates of the Church and her privileges be main- 
tained and protected; that none have authorization for the 
teaching or publication of false or subversive documents; that 
education, public or private, be supervised and led by the eccle- 
siastical authorities ; and, finally, that the chains be broken that 
until now have held the Church under the sovereignty and 
despotism of civil government." ("Mexico a traves de los 
Siglos," Vol. 5, p. 671.) 

To a strong man this gigantic task of reorganizing religious 
orders which had already disappeared, of delivering up the demo- 
cratic and enlightened educational system of Juarez to the 
Church, of creating an Inquisition for the abolition of religious 
freedom, and of restoring to the Church her vast estates, 
already homesteaded by the Mexican peons and colonized by 
the French, would have been disconcerting enough. To the 
frivolous, incompetent Maximilian it appeared simply prepos- 
terous. From the moment of his entry into Mexico City he had 
never troubled to conceal an exaggerated contempt and disdain 
for everything Mexican, and the thought of playing lackey to 
Mexican bishops filled him with exasperation. Having neither 
wisdom, dignity, nor self-discipline, Maximilian was not the 
man to negotiate a difficult situation adroitly. His refusal to 
comply with the papal instructions was not the refusal of a 
strong man to contravene his convictions, but the refusal of a 
pert schoolboy to perform his task; and it cost him the invalu- 
able support of the Clerical party and the friendship of Rome. 
It was a tactical blunder of the worst description and one of the 
direct causes of his subsequent downfall. 

Throughout the long struggle President Juarez with his cabi- 
net travelled back and forth through Queretaro, Durango, 
Chihuahua, and the states of the west, cheering and encouraging 
his people, faithfully upholding the constitution and enforcing 
the Leyes de Reforma. Wherever in his travels he encountered 
large private estates owned by the outlawed partisans of the 



254 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

empire he confiscated them and reassigned them in full legal 
title to the peons working upon them. This policy he pursued 
through his three years of wandering, and in consequence vast 
tracts of valuable land became distributed among the people.* 

Arriving at El Paso del Norte (to-day Ciudad Juarez) in 
November, 1864, Juarez issued the following manifesto, and 
caused it to be widely circulated throughout the territory under 
his jurisdiction : " In this city, as in any other city of the Repub- 
lic in which the government may deem it convenient to reside, 
according to the circumstances, the Citizen President will use 
his utmost efforts to fulfil his duties with the same firmness and 
constancy as heretofore, thus performing his obligations to the 
Mexican people, who are yet unceasingly fighting against the 
invader and who must inevitably triumph in their defence of 
their independence and their republican institutions." A few 
days later the Constitutionalists recaptured Chihuahua from 
the imperialists, and Juarez immediately made it his seat of 
government. 

This was the climax of the struggle. From that moment by 
some desperate, well-nigh inhuman effort the Constitutionalists 
began inch by inch the bloody reconquest of the fatherland 
from the invaders. Maximilian and the French commanders, 
alarmed at the unmistakable turning of the tide, retaliated with 
a campaign of the most brutal extermination, organizing to that 
end bodies of counter-guerillas, with orders to burn all towns, 
villages, and hamlets suspected of harbouring or supporting 
Mexican patriots. These counter-guerilla bands, recruited 
largely from the southern confederates and from the jails of 
Mexico and France, were in reality licensed gangs of murderers 
and marauders without military discipline or human mercy, 
and the outrages they wrought upon the defenceless Mexican 
communities can only be equalled in modern annals by the 

*We have personally examined a number of these decrees of confiscation and 
reassignment in the states of Durango and Chihuahua. The original benefici- 
aries, of course, are dead, and their heirs, for the most part, have been ousted by 
Diaz and his scientificos. 



FRENCH INTERVENTION ^55 

Turkish atrocities in Albania. Although the Mexican patriot 
in the field now knew that when he returned to his native town 
he would be likely to find his home in ashes, his wife dishonoured, 
and his children dead, he only turned to the fight with renewed 
energy. Victory after victory attended the onward march of 
the Constitutionalist army, and Maximilian and his "advisers" 
once more furiously endeavoured to strike terror into that 
brave host, long lost to all fear, by promulgating the notorious 
"Decree of October the Third." We quote it in part : 

"Maximiliano Emperador de Mexico. With the counsel of 
our ministers we decree : 

"Article I. Every one belonging to bands or armed groups 
not legally authorized, and proclaiming or not some political 
pretext, no matter how many may be the number of those who 
form the band, nor what may be its organization, character, or 
denomination, will be prosecuted by the martial courts, and if 
found guilty, even of being merely a member of that band, will 
be sentenced to capital punishment and executed within the 
next twenty-four hours after the sentence is given. 

"Article II. Those who belong to the bands mentioned in the 
above article, and are arrested in armed battle, will be prose- 
cuted by the commander of the army making the arrest, who 
within twenty-four hours after such arrest will make a summary 
investigation of the crime with a hearing of the defendant and 
his defence. A record will be made of this investigation, in- 
cluding the sentence, which will be capital punishment if the 
defendant is guilty even of being merely a member of the 
band. The commander will execute this sentence within the 
twenty -four hours above mentioned, giving to the culprit reli- 
gious rites. After the execution the record will be sent to the 
War Department. . . . 

"Article V. To be prosecuted and sentenced to the extreme 
penalty according to Article I of this law. First: Those who 



^56 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

willingly assist the guerillas with money, or in any other way. 
Second: All those who give to them news, hints, or advice. 
Third: All those who willingly or consciously, knowing that 
they are guerillas, give or sell to them arms, horses, ammunition, 
food, or any war supplies. 

"Article VI. Also will be prosecuted according to Article I: 
First, All those who are maintaining with the guerillas any 
connection that shows an understanding with them. Second: 
All those who willingly and knowingly secrete them in their 
homes or buildings. Third: All those who by word or writing 
produce false alarms against the public order, or start any dem- 
onstration against the public order. Fourth: All the propri- 
etors or superintendents of country farms who do not make 
known the fact of such bands having passed by said farms. 

"Given in the Palace of Mexico on the Third of October, 
1865. Maximiliano." 

Under this barbarous decree many thousands of defenceless 
non-combatants, aged people, women and children, were legally 
done to death at the whim of brutal guerilla chiefs or military 
commanders . Maximilian committed many crimes in the course 
of his brief career, but none more bloody than this. Ultimately 
it sealed his own death-warrant. 

A man utterly without principles or human feeling, frivolous, 
devoid even of intelligent self-interest, Maximilian, in com- 
plicity with his co-conspirators, usurped the throne of Mexico, 
laid waste her territories, and murdered thousands of her people, 
and crowned the last moment of his anti-social career by offer- 
ing to betray all his supporters and friends as the price of his 
own wretched existence — truly a fitting agent and represent- 
ative of the master class of the world, as truly as Juarez and 
the magnificent Constitution of 1857 were fitting representatives 
of the working class of the world. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE FRENCH TROOPS 
AND THE END OF THE EMPIRE 

WE NOW come to the second and last phase of the war 
marked by the continual advance of the Constitutionalists, the 
withdrawal of the French troops, and the downfall of the empire. 
The causes which led to the withdrawal of the French troops 
from Mexico may be enumerated in the order of their impor- 
tance as follows : 

I. The gross misrepresentations made to Napoleon III by the 
Clerical party in Mexico as to the strength of the military force 
required to subdue the Constitutionalists ^ and the subsequent dis- 
appointment and disgust of Napoleon III and the French Chamber 
in view of the unexpected prolongation of the war and its heavy 
cost in life and money. 

When Napoleon III and his coterie undertook the task of 
invading Mexico, and of building up a Mexican empire, they 
were largely influenced in their action by the idea that the entire 
enterprise could be accomplished with a small force of some four 
or five thousand troops, and in no longer time and at no greater 
expense than might be involved in the march from Vera Cruz 
to Mexico City. Colonel Valaza, chief of staff of the French 
invading army, suffered from the same delusion, and his letter to 
the French Minister of War, March 22, 1862, aptly expresses 
the general impression of the imperialists in regard to the easy 
conquest of Mexico : " These affairs at bottom are quite simple, 
and close as I am to them I have not the least doubt of the 
speedy and complete success of the establishment of that 

257 



258 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

monarchical government in Mexico which is so earnestly desired 
by the majority of the country, and to which even the opposing 
minority are already resigned. ... In spite of everything 
the Juarez government is becoming more disorganized every 
day. It is surrounded by people ready to desert it. Its mil- 
itary forces are disbanding. The commanders of the garrisons 
of Mexico are betraying the government. I am 'persuaded that 
an armed force, no matter how small it may he, can take the capital 
with no more trouble than is necessary to supply it with food dur- 
ing the march.'* 

One can readily imagine, therefore, the shock with which 
Napoleon III and his cabal heard of the utter rout of the French 
at Puebla, and the impatience and disgust with which, after 
having increased the French army from six thousand to sixty- 
three thousand men, they waited year after year for news of 
that too readily anticipated complete conquest of Mexico. The 
truth is that long before the tide of war had definitely turned 
against the imperialists Napoleon III had become heartily tired 
of the whole affair, and having now well lined his pockets at 
Mexico's expense he was only seeking some plausible pretext to 
withdraw his troops and leave Maximilian to his fate. 

II. The overwhelming advance of the Constitutionalists after 
the fall of Chihuahua. 

Coupled with the bitter disillusionment of Napoleon III the 
real cause of the withdrawal of the French troops from Mexico 
was the overwhelming advance of the Constitutionalists sub- 
sequent to the fall of Chihuahua. Victory after victory 
crowned their march; each fresh achievement served only to 
increase their strength; and it became painfully evident to 
Napoleon III that if he failed to withdraw his troops there 
would soon be no troops to withdraw. Military authorities 
who have studied this campaign compute that with another 
twelve months of such fighting as began at Chihuahua in No- 
vember, 1864, and continued throughout the year 1865, the 
French army would have been utterly annihilated. 




Photograph by Paul Thompson, N. Y. 

YAQUI REBELS IN CAMP 

The commissariat of some of the bands of Constitutionalists is supplied by the 

women. Yet others remain behind with the old men and children to 

till the confiscated farms, for the support of the rebels 




A REBEL BARRICADE IN JUAREZ 

'They are fighting to-day as they fought in the days of Hidalgo, of Morelos, of 

Guerrero . . . for the land, for democracy. They will triumph" 

(See page 358) 



WITHDRAWAL OF FRENCH TROOPS 259 

"He" (Napoleon HI), says Bancroft, "now saw that, al- 
though defeated, the republicans were never crushed, springing 
up ever with renewed courage and in larger numbers, or abiding 
with firm and bitter purpose the moment favourable to their 
cause. . . . His triumphs were sterile, and the end seemed 
more remote the farther he advanced. He had set out prima- 
rily to recover an indebtedness; but millions had been expended 
and thousands of lives sacrificed without insuring even the first 
claim. The whole nation (France) took alarm at the gloomy 
prospects of an expedition which from the beginning had found 
many opponents, and had at last gradually encroached upon the 
patience of the majority." (Bancroft, "History of Mexico," 
Vol. 6, p. 207.) 

III. The loss of French military prestige and the consequent 
threatening attitude of Germany. 

Another very cogent reason for the withdrawal of the 
French troops from Mexico is to be found in the loss of French 
military prestige, and the consequent threatening attitude of 
Prussia toward France. Napoleon I had made France the 
military terror of Europe; Napoleon III made her the military 
laughing stock; and Germany — long held in leash by the myth 
of French military superiority — now threw off her fears and 
began vigorously to prepare for that Franco-Prussian war 
which later was destined to humble the bully of Mexico in the 
dust — an historical Nemesis usually overlooked. Too late 
Napoleon III recognized his monumental blunder and began 
the hasty withdrawal of his troops from Mexico to strengthen 
the home forces against the threatening invasion. 

IV. The bitter discontent of the French intellectuals and prole- 
tariat with the war. 

Almost as potent as the causes we have already cited as lead- 
ing to the withdrawal of the French troops from Mexico was the 
bitter discontent of the French intellectuals and proletariat 
with the war. These men, whose fathers had produced the 
"Reign of Terror," and who themselves were about to exalt 



260 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

their names in history in the Paris Commune, were not of a spirit 
to remain idle before the slaughter of their Mexican brothers 
and the destruction of a constitution which echoed the deepest 
aspirations of their own hearts — much less that this slaughter 
and destruction were being accomplished at the hands of their 
own hated bourgeoisie. From the very inception of the inter- 
vention their attacks upon the government through the medium 
of the popular platform and press had been unceasing and bitter 
attacks which grew in extent and violence as the conduct of the 
war continued to outrage every human, and particularly every 
proletarian, feeling, and before this rising wrath of the com- 
monalty Napoleon III had to bow. 

V. Maximilian's own fatuity and irresponsibility which had 
antagonized all his supporters, including the Pope and the Impe- 
rialist party itself. 

We have already dealt with this point in a previous chapter. 
There is no doubt that Maximilian's personality utterly dis- 
illusioned all the parties to intervention and hastened the with- 
drawal of their support. " The interested society in Mexico was 
unanimous in its complaint against Maximilian," says one his- 
torian, "particularly the real monarchists, who suffered to see 
how his Majesty had separated himself from the Conservative 
policy and from the men who represented it; and they were 
deeply offended that his Majesty saw fit to ridicule the more 
respectable and dignified persons in the presence of Mexicans 
and foreign adventurers who were known to be hostile to the 
empire and Catholicism." (F. Arrangoiz, "Apuntes para la 
historia del segundo Imperio Mexicano," p. 132.) 

The exact credit due to the United States for the withdrawal of the 
French army from Mexico we have already discussed. Popular 
impressions to the contrary, we have proved as conclusively as it 
needs to he proved, that the United States influence was never ex- 
erted for the withdrawal of the French troops except in the mildest 
manner, and that it could not be rightfully regarded as even a 
minor factor in the final accomplishment of that withdrawal. 



WITHDRAWAL OF FRENCH TROOPS 261 

Accordingly, under the pressure of disillusionment, defeat, 
fear of foreign invasion and of domestic criticism, Napoleon III . 
announced on the 2d of January, 1866, to the French Chamber 
that orders would be given for the immediate and entire with- 
drawal of the French troops from Mexico. The terms of the 
treaty of Miramar gave him an excellent and much needed 
public excuse for his action. It mattered not that Maximilian, 
whom he had lured to his doom, was thereby left to face the 
avenging host of the Constitutionalists with a mere handful of 
Mexican reactionaries. The affair was finished, and as far as 
he. Napoleon, was concerned not without profit. Millions of 
pesos lined his coffers. As for the empire, Eh bien I it was a beau- 
tiful dream at least ! 



The withdrawal of the French troops from Mexico was imme- 
diately followed by the overwhelming advance of the Consti- 
tutionalists. State after state and city after city fell into their 
hands, till Queretaro, Mexico City, and Puebla alone remained 
in the possession of the imperialists. Presently Puebla likewise 
fell into the hands of the advancing host, and Maximilian, with 
his two generals, Miramon and Mejia, prepared to make a last 
stand at Queretaro, the stronghold of the imperial forces. The 
Constitutionalists promptly laid siege to the city, and in two 
months had reduced the defenders to desperate straits. There- 
upon, Maximilian, seeing that the end was near, secretly sent a 
message to General Escobedo, commander-in-chief of the Con- 
stitutionalist army, offering to betray the imperial forces, and 
deliver them up without stipulation on condition that he him- 
self be spared and permitted to return to Europe !* 

Fear that his treachery and cowardice might be discovered 
evidently weighed upon him, for he wrote a personal note to 
Colonel Lopez, his secret emissary to Escobedo, in the following 

* A full account of this affair is given in "Mexico a traves de los Siglos," 
Vol. V, pp. 839-844. 



262 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

terms: "My dear Colonel Lopez, we recommend to you the 
deepest secrecy in the matter of the commission to General 
Escobedo which we have entrusted to you, because if it should 
become known our honour would be smirched. Yours affection- 
ately, Maximilian." 

These two skilful commanders of the reactionary army, Mi- 
ramon and Mejia, the one almost a Spaniard, and the other, 
strangely enough, a full-blooded native, were quite unaware of 
these overtures, and were full of determination to fight to the 
last. Undoubtedly they would have carried out their determi- 
nation had the Emperor shown an equal courage. But Maxi- 
milian, having received word from Escobedo in reply to his 
treacherous offer that his surrender must be wholly uncondi- 
tional, hoped yet to appease the wrath of the Constitutionalists 
by accepting their terms. 

Accordingly, a few days later he surrendered, together with 
his generals and entire army. The three leaders, Maximilian, 
Miramon, and Mejia, were immediately imprisoned, court- 
martialed, and declared guilty — the two Mexican generals of 
high treason, and Maximilian of "being the main instrument 
for the French intervention, of being an usurper of the sover- 
eignty of the Mexican people, of having used violence in the 
destruction of the life and property of Mexican citizens, of 
making war with the French commanders against the Mexican 
Republic, of being a factor in the destruction of thousands of 
lives of innocent people, of bringing Austrian and Belgian fil- 
bustering expeditions into Mexico, and of having given and 
executed the Decree of October 3, 1865, by which thousands 
of patriots were slain." 

When an attempt was made to induce President Juarez to 
pardon the three convicted criminals, more especially Maxi- 
milian, he emphatically refused, supporting his refusal in the 
following words: "The death of Maximilian is the death of 
the spirit of foreign intervention, which, under leniency, will 
revive again and organize new armies under the pretext of 



WITHDRAWAL OF FRENCH TROOPS 263 

moralizing the Mexican people, but in reality to bring another 
usurper to Mexico. It is necessary that the existence of Mex- 
ico as ^n independent nation be not left to the good-will of 
foreign potentates; it is necessary also that the reform, progress, 
and freedom of the Mexican people be not hampered and jeop- 
ardized by some European sovereign, who, in patronage of the 
so-called Emperor of Mexico, might plan to regulate the degree 
of slavery or liberty of the Mexican people to suit his own taste. 
The return of Maximilian to Europe would be used in the 
hands of the enemies of Mexico as a weapon for the restoration 
of a regime disastrous to the democratic institutions of this 
country. For fifty years Mexico has used a system of pardon 
and leniency with a resultant anarchy at home and a loss of 
prestige abroad. Never thus can the Republic be consolidated.'* 
Accordingly, on the 19th of May, 1867, Maximilian, Miramon, 
and Mejia were lined up and shot. 



European intervention was at an end. But what of that in- 
ternational capitalism which had invoked and sustained it for 
the purpose of destroying the Constitution of 1857 — that men- 
ace to the capitalist exploitation of Latin America, and 
unhallowed tocsin to the proletariat of Europe .^^ International 
capitalism, although much incensed at first by the impudent vi- 
tality of the Mexican proletariat, nevertheless accepted the final 
failure of intervention philosophically. Its leaders saw with 
great content that the economic ruin, social disorganization, 
and physical exhaustion they had brought upon the Mexican 
people through the army of Napoleon HI. would effectually 
delay and hamper the workings of the Constitution for many 
years; and their content was the greater that they recognized 
such a condition of society was a fertile breeding-ground for re- 
action and sedition. They bided their time awaiting that reac- 
tion, and in the fulness thereof, through the medium of Porfirio 
Diaz, their creature whom they made, supported, petted, and 



264 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

eulogized, they more effectually killed the Constitution of 
1857, crushed the Mexican democracy, and worked their will 
upon Mexican labour and the vast Mexican national resources 
than they could have done through any successful intervention 
or series of interventions. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC AND THE 
CONSTITUTION OF 1857 

ON THE 15th of July, 1867, President Juarez, with his cabi- 
net, entered Mexico City. The French army had vanished, 
the Church power was crushed, the imperiahst forces were van- 
quished, a crown and a sceptre lay shattered on the ground, and 
the triumphant entry of the patriot President into the capital 
affirmed the full reestablishment of the social and economic 
system proclaimed by the Constitution of 1857. But at what 
cost! Mexico, as the price of her freedom, had been compelled 
to pay with the ruin of her agriculture, the destruction of her 
best and bravest, and the disastrous perversion of her national 
psychology. 

The intervention, ending with the downfall of the empire, 
was the culminating struggle of the people against their old 
enemy, the economic despotism of the Church, and the opening 
struggle of the people with their modern enemy — the economic 
despotism of international capitalism. The results of one 
epoch are the causes of the next. It is with the results of the 
first struggle that we are concerned here. Only by thoroughly 
understanding these results can we appreciate all the factors 
at work in the second great struggle which began a few years 
later and is now culminating before our eyes. These results 
we may tabulate as follows: 

1. The utter ruin of agriculture. 

2. The heavy destruction of the more vital and valuable ele- 
ment of the Mexican nation. 

265 



^66 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

3. The perversion of the noble spirit of the Ayutla Revolu- 
tion, and the consequent development of a despotic soldiery 
faction. 

4. The development of an unique passion in the Mexican 
people for the fatherland, and in consequence the development 
in them of a terror amounting almost to cowardice in face of 
threatened foreign invasion. 

We shall proceed to deal with these in their order: 

First : The utter ruin of agriculture. 

The peons, who had enjoyed a brief possession of the land 
under the Constitution of 1857, were compelled to leave their 
small farms to defend the fatherland, and even those who re- 
mained on the land, to support their comrades in the fight, 
were subjected to wholesale murder and pillage at the hands of 
the revengeful reactionary forces, particularly during the oper- 
ation of the iniquitous "Decree of October 3d." The beasts of 
burden so necessary to agriculture were not to be had; the oxen 
had been slaughtered for food; the horses, mules, and burros 
had been commandeered for the war; and the cows, pigs, and 
chickens had been preyed upon incessantly by famished bands 
of guerillas and counter-guerillas. Under such circumstances 
agriculture was paralyzed and the blight of famine came near 
annihilating the people already stricken to their knees. Thus, 
when the noble work of reconstruction — begun under Juarez 
and continued under Lerdo de Tejada — was broken in upon by 
international capitalism acting through the medium of Porflrio 
Diaz, the people could no longer rally to the support of their gov- 
ernment. 

Second: The heavy destruction of the more vital and valuable 
element in the nation. 

The common people of any nation fall naturally into three 
divisions : the idealists, the small group of exalted, self -actuating 
souls who dream the dream of the people and vitalize the mass; 
the satisfying multitude of shrewd, honest, kindly folk, who, 
in virtue of their position as the feeders and tenders of the nation, 



REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC 267 

readily participate in any social activity for the betterment of 
humanity, who realize on the plane of practical affairs the dream 
of the idealists, and who constitute the only element in society 
which makes for progress, liberty, and civilization : and last, the 
underfed, cowardly, stunted victims of class rule and economic 
anarchy, who, vitiated and overmastered by their environment, 
are destined to become the ready tools of reaction. In the 
progress of the mighty class war it is ever the courageous first 
two divisions of the proletariat who pay the heavy toll of blood 
for freedom and civilization at the barricades or on the battle- 
field, in the foetid jails, or on the reeking scaffold, leaving the 
piteous degenerates of the third division intact not only to 
propagate their kind but to become in the hands of the master 
class the very weapons which make the barricade, the battlefield, 
the jail, and the scaffold of no avail. Thus is humanity shorn. 
If this be true of the whole civilized world, and it is undeniably, 
tragically true, of Mexico at the period of the Restoration. The 
fifty-seven years of battle maintained by the Mexican people for 
freedom, humanity, and progress against their ruling class — ■ 
Church, Army, and Aristocracy — against this ruling class 
allied with Spain, and then with the United States, and again 
with France, culminating in the Ayutla Revolution, three years 
of civil war, and four years more of that frightful struggle 
against the same ruling class, allied with the power of inter- 
national capitalism, had all but annihilated that glorious ele- 
ment of the Mexican people to which we have referred. 

Certainly the great majority of the peons were now small 
land-owners, and they endeavoured to the best of their ability 
to retain and foster the system which had made them such. 
But they were not the men of 1856; they lacked the vigour and 
the intelligence of the Avutla fighters. Thus Mexico was com- 
pelled to rebxiild herself from the dregs up; thus international 
capitalism in the person of Diaz found ready to hand a consid- 
erable degenerate element well adapted to the purposes of re- 
action; and thus for forty -two years, until the blind revolt of 



268 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

1910-1914, Mexico has lain prostrate — almost without a soul. 
And that is the great and terrible problem which the Mexican 
people faced in 1867 and face to-day. They have been drained 
of much of their best blood; the breed of Juarez is no more. 

Third : The distortion and "perversion of the noble spirit of the 
Ayutla Revolution, and the consequent development of a despotic 
soldiery faction. 

Out of the travail of the Ayutla Revolution came forth a 
spirit of freedom, solidarity, and humanity unsurpassed in the 
history of the race. The fiery ordeal of the three years' civil 
war served but to render it more pure, powerful, and practical. 
But this spirit which was the redemption of Mexican society, 
the warranty of the constitution in the hearts of the people, was 
thoroughly perverted and brutalized during the long, cruel 
struggle against the foreign hordes of international capitalism. 

Kipling in his story of the British soldier who in the fierce 
suffering of the Afghan campaign forgot his name, even the 
number of his regiment, and Zola, in his depiction of the brutal- 
izing effects of war upon even the most noble minds, in that 
great psychological study of the Franco-Prussian struggle, 
"La Debacle," both touch upon a profound truth: that inter- 
national war not only devastates the economic resources of the 
nations involved but their very souls. No more terrible illus- 
tration of that truth is to be found in history than in the perver- 
sion of the sublime spirit of the Ayutla Revolution into the sordid 
spirit of despotic militarism which characterized the survivors 
of the war against French intervention. 

Of the patriots who fought bitterly and tenaciously through 
four long years against the French and Mexican reactionary 
armies, however, not all succumbed to the brutalizing effects of 
their experience. Many, indeed the majority, returned to their 
lands and laboured patiently to repair the waste and loss of years. 
But there was also a large element of a lower type in whom the 
last trace of nobility had been quenched, who now regarded 
their services in the war as a legitimate excuse for attempting 



REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC 269 

to impose themselves as a military despotic faction upon the 
fatherland. 

From this class sprang Porfirio Diaz, the despoiler of Mexico; 
from this class sprang his followers; and in this class interna- 
tional capitalism divined the solution of its frustrated plans. 

Fourth : The development of a unique passion for the father- 
land among the Mexican common people, and in consequence the 
development of a popular terror amounting to cowardice in the face 
of threatened foreign intervention. 

The common people of Mexico, as distinguished from the 
ruling class — and we must repeat this distinction at the risk of 
tediousness, for it is a genuine distinction of both class and 
blood — are a domestic folk, puritans in their patriarchal mode 
of life, great lovers of children, of the home and its simple joys. 
Among them, unless where they have been debauched by too 
close contact with the ruling class or the disintegrating life of 
great cities, marital infidelity, family discord, or sexual immor- 
ality is almost unknown. That this spirit of reverence for the 
elemental good of life still exists among them in spite of the ap- 
palling and disgusting conditions in which great numbers of 
them are compelled to live is a remarkable testimonial to the 
vitality of the Mexican character, and the most promising 
augury for the future of the race. Family love is the very key 
to Mexican psychology; out of it grows that gentle, courteous 
hospitality, kindly good humour and fidelity which form the 
chief charm of the people. To judge Mexican character from 
its military class on the one hand, or from the slum proletariat 
of Mexico City on the other, is the common error of primitive 
minds, of which unhappily the world is full. 

What has this to do with this unique passion for the father- 
land of which we propose to speak? Domestic love unmolested 
may well remain a sentiment bounded by the home, but domes- 
tic love violated by the oppressor, crucified by foreign legions, 
deepens and broadens into a profounder passion for the sanctity 
and inviolability of that common home, the fatherland, and 



270 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

becomes the strongest passion known to man. This is preem- 
inently the case with the Mexican people. With them, under 
the stress of incessant foreign invasion, the hearth has widened 
to the national boundaries, and family love to a passion for the 
fatherland altogether unique in modern annals. 

When Juarez began the work of reconstruction in 1867, 
scarcely fifty years had passed since the Independence, and in 
that time the Mexican common people had become stamped 
with the psychology of a race surrounded by enemies, and main- 
taining its existence at the point of the sword. For fifty years 
they had fought for the land without which there is no home; 
again and again in that time had they come almost within reach 
of their desire, only to see themselves hurled back by the cap- 
italist foreign hand at the behest of their own ruling class. At 
every moment of triumph foreign invasion had come to tear 
the fruits of victory from their grasp. From Spain during the 
Independence, from the Southern States in the Texas war, 
and later from the United States, both South and North, and 
then from France they had seen the invader sweep down upon 
them to stay their hand in the struggle with the oppressor. 

Finding themselves thus alone in a world apparently deprived 
of all sentiments of human solidarity toward them — a world 
powerful, subtle, murderous, a world bent upon the destruction 
of all they held most dear — the Mexican people inevitably 
conceived a hatred for the foreigner, and a passsion for the father- 
land incomprehensible to more fortunate peoples. Such a pas- 
sion, coupled with weakness and exhaustion, becomes a solici- 
tude amounting to terror, and a fear of molestation amounting 
to cowardice. And herein lies the whole secret of Mexico's 
history since 1867. Rather than endure the violation of the 
fatherland again the people were prepared to endure all things. 

None understood this better than Porfirio Diaz, and during 
the thirty-four years of his despotic rule over the Mexican people 
it was with the threat of United States intervention that he 
held them down in dumb submission to his will. 



CHAPTER XIX 
AGRARIAN AND POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 

WITH the return of the constitutional government to the 
capital began the work of national restoration. The whole 
country, as we have said, lay in ruins; and upon that great 
promising multitude of peons who had become small farmers 
lay the task of rebuilding it. Scarcely was there grain enough 
in the land for seed. With minds dazed by long suffering, with 
hearts deep in mourning, the peons bowed themselves to the 
task of tilling the soil, rendered fertile by the patriotic blood 
of their fathers. The dream of the race had been realized : a plot 
of ground for each, a home for each, the full and free possession 
of the fatherland for all; and patiently they entered upon the 
tremendous work of reconstruction. Their humble dwellings 
lay in ashes; with bare hands they builded them again from the 
stones of the earth. Their fields were choked with the rank 
weeds of years; with their rusty hoes they cleared them; while 
from their scanty handfuls of seed, cherished as if they were 
ingots of gold, they began once more to raise the crops which 
meant life to their famishing families, and health and prosper- 
ity to the fatherland. 

Cowering in the cities, scattered and shattered, were the rem- 
nants of the old ruling class, with watchful eye to the future, 
waiting their opportunity. Already a faction of the republican 
soldiery, perverted and brutalized by the war, had begun to 
threaten the peace of the new order. Not yet was the social 
body cleansed. 

Under the pressure of the turmoil of the civil war and the 

271 



272 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

subsequent war of intervention President Juarez had been com- 
pelled to retain office continuously since 1858 without reelectioUo 
Now that constitutional rule had been firmly reestablished, he 
earnestly desired that it should be subjected to the proper 
political authorization of the people. In due time, therefore, 
he summoned the nation to a presidential election. In the 
ensuing presidential campaign three candidates appeared in the 
field, two of them — Benito Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada — rep- 
resenting the new agrarian democracy and the national aspi- 
ration for the upholdmg and full realization of the Constitution 
of 1857; the other — Porfirio Diaz — representing a small reac- 
tionary faction comprising the shattered remnants of the im- 
perialists, together with the perverted soldiery element spawned 
by the recent war of intervention, and a sprinkling of astute 
lawyers, willing agents of Wall Street and the American railroad 
speculators. 

Between Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada there existed no trace 
of political dissension or shadow of personal rivalry. They 
were both great-hearted patriots whose sole desire was to serve 
their country. Indeed Lerdo de Tejada entered the race at the 
express wish of Juarez as the candidate of those of the people 
who considered the principle of reelection to a certain extent un- 
fair. Both men were thoroughly identified with the principles 
of the constitution, were thoroughly representative of the new 
agrarian democracy, and accordingly enjoyed the implicit con- 
fidence of the great bulk of the nation. 

Let us now glance at the third candidate. Who was this man 
Diaz.f^ "Porfirio Diaz in 1876," says one of the most brilliant 
writers of modern Mexico, Dr. Lara Pardo, "was a military 
leader of medium prestige. His biographers who of late have 
made him a demigod, proclaiming him to be the best general 
Mexico has produced, have greatly exaggerated his achieve- 
ments. . . . His contemporaries thoroughly agreed that 
General Diaz inspired them with a certain contempt by reason 
of his uncouthness and low intellectual calibre. The Lerdista , 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 273 

press indeed ridiculed him and made him the mark of its biting 
satire on this account; and even his own partisans, the intel- 
lectual leaders of his revolt, looked upon him merely as a tool." 
(Dr. Luis Lara Pardo, " De Porfirio Diaz a Francisco Madero," 
pp. 7-19.) 

In these few lines Dr. Pardo, who was closely associated with 
Diaz throughout his career, has well indicated the character 
of the future dictator of Mexico. If this was the type of man 
who opposed himself to the splendid constructive genius of the 
patriot Juarez, and the cultivated humanitarianism of Lerdo 
de Tejada, so intimately expressive of the new national ideals, 
who were his supporters ? What interests and social elements did 
he represent.^ We have already briefly indicated them as the 
shattered remnants of the imperialists, the perverted soldiery 
faction spawned by the war of intervention, and a sprinkling 
of astute lawyers in the service of foreign capital. It is of the 
highest importance to the proper grasp of subsequent events 
that the composition of this faction be clearly understood. 

The perverted soldiery were at first the only element capable 
of opposing the constitutional order under the guise of a polit- 
ical contention. They were, as we have said in the preceding 
chapter, the brutalized product of the long, bloody struggle 
with France, the disastrous aftermath of international war. 
Says Baz: "Those who had left whatever social position they 
might have had in order to adopt the profession of arms during 
the war of intervention now regarded themselves entitled to a 
recompense which the government was in no position to give. 
These men bitterly resented their honourable discharge at the 
close of the campaign . . . and accordingly formed them- 
selves in combination with other disgruntled elements into a 
group of opposition, guided solely by personal interests." 
(Gustavo Baz, Vida de Juarez," p. 30.) The imperialists were 
no lovers of. Diaz or of the soldiery which had helped to defeat 
them in the recent war. They were, however, too weak to 
stand alone, and consequently were glad enough to throw in. 



274 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

their lot with any element which might promise for them oppo- 
sition to the hated constitutional rule. With them also were 
leagued the clergy and the remnants of the landed aristocracy. 
In speaking of the composition of this anti-social faction, one 
of its most prominent leaders, and one of the most devout 
eulogists of Diaz, Rafael de Zayas Enriquez, says : "The oppo- 
sition consisted of the soldiers who had served under Diaz, 
both the professional exponents of the old regime (cuartelazo) and 
those who in good faith desired active progress, and even many im- 
perialists who could not brook Juarez. They formed a hetero- 
geneous party as far as the number of its groups was concerned, 
but a homogeneous one in the common aspirations which it 
saw personified in its leader." (Rafael de Zayas Enriquez, 
"Porfirio Diaz," p. 100.) The distinction between the social 
quality of these two opposing elements, the new agrarian dem- 
ocracy and this small faction of reactionaries, is masterfully 
drawn by Dr. Lara Pardo in the following words: "Juarez 
was in reality the first instance in Mexico of a civil power, a civil 
power which effectually checked the military despotism — that 
degenerate product of the war — instead of submitting to it. 
But this military despotism would not tolerate relegation to 
second place. The soldiery, covered in martial glories, real or 
spurious, and spurred by dishonest ambitions, deemed it neces- 
sary to assail the presidency of the restored Republic as a 
coveted booty of war." (Dr. Luis Lara Pardo, *'De Porfirio 
Diaz a Francisco Madero," p. 8.) 

Thus in this Diaz faction we see the perverted republican 
soldiery, the old exponents of the cuartelazo and the disgruntled 
imperialists and clergy working together, apparently in a demo- 
cratic political struggle for the success of Porfirio Diaz, with 
the secret agents and foreign ministers of international cap- 
italism as vastly interested spectators. 

In due time the elections were held and Juarez was reelected 
to the presidency by the overwhelming vote of the new agrarian 
democracy, the citizens, and the intellectuals. Hardly had 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 275 

Congress proclaimed Juarez chief executive by the choice of the 
people than cuartelazos of the disaffected soldiery broke out in 
the garrisons of Mexico City and Tampico. Both movements 
were promptly quelled, but they served effectually to indicate 
exactly what the civil authority must expect in the future from 
its opponents. 

"The Porfirista party, defeated at the polls," says Baz, 
"gathered its forces and dashed into rebellion, resolved to gain 
by force of arms a victory which, according to their own pre- 
text, had been snatched from them by governmental tactics 
of pressure and bribery. . . They were not the majority 
of the nation; the majority was anxious for peace. The people 
saw themselves protected in their dearest interests by a govern- 
ment undeniably Liberal, and they firmly supported that gov- 
ernment against the cuartelazos." (Gustavo Baz, "Vida de 
Juarez," p. 301.) 

Undoubtedly it was only the exhausted condition of the peo- 
ple which emboldened this disaffected element to rear its head, 
and only that same exhausted condition of the people which 
saved that element from immediate extermination. 

Following the disturbances in Mexico City and Tampico, 
cuartelazos broke out in Guaymas and Durango, while in the 
states of Sonora and Yucatan the feudal aristocracy endeav- 
oured to inflame the unsophisticated Mayas into rebelKon 
against the very system which alone could protect them 
in the possession of their lands. Meanwhile the bulk of 
the people went forward with the task of cultivating their farms, 
confident of the ability of the government to deal with the 
disturbers. It was under these circumstances that the Presi- 
dent's term of office again expired and the new elections were 
held. As in the first election after the Restoration the candi- 
dates were, for the people and the constitution, Benito Juarez 
and Lerdo de Tejada; for the perverted soldiery, clergy, imperi- 
alists, and American railroad speculators, Porfirio Diaz. Again 
Juarez was reelected by an overwhelming majority, with Lerdo 



276 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

de Tejada, as President of the Supreme Court. Diaz received a 
ludicrous minority, and the reactionaries, beaten at the polls, 
immediately prepared to place their tool in power by those 
methods of brute force with which alone they were really con- 
versant. 

The impudence of this reactionary faction reached its logical 
climax on the 7th of November, 1871, in the promulgation of a 
manifesto known as the Plan de la Noria, followed by a wide- 
spread cuartelazo in its support. The manifesto, although signed 
by Diaz, in reality was drawn up by Justo Benitez, one of those 
astute lawyers with Wall Street affiliations who constituted the 
brains of the revolt. Indeed, Diaz in all his eighty-odd years 
was never more than the tool of superior minds, and never at- 
tained even the ability to express himself intelligibly in writing. 

The Plan de la Noria was exactly similar in every respect 
to the militarist manifestos of Iturbide, Bustamante, and Santa 
Ana, to whom in truth Porfirio Diaz bears a strict analogy. 
It proclaimed that the government was unlawfully established, 
and consequently was not to be regarded as a constituted au- 
thority; that the most noted men of the country would convene, at 
a date and place to be decided later, for the purpose of estab- 
lishing a real national government; that Porfirio Diaz, as leader 
of the revolt, would become President of the Republic. This 
crude attempt to replace the enlightened modern democratic 
system of Mexico with the brutal brigandage of the old military 
dictatorships brought such a storm of indignation from the na- 
tion that the revolt suffered the most complete collapse. The 
real cause of its failure, however, lay in the fact that it was es- 
sentially domestic and inadequately supported from without. 

International capitalism at this time, although it was watching 
Mexican affairs with keen interest, and although its agents 
formed the brains of the disaffection, had not yet definitely 
decided upon the expensive policy of financing another revolu- 
tion. It had nothing to hope from Juarez, it is true, but Juarez 
was now an old man worn out by his tremendous labours on 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 277 

behalf of the new democracy; in the logic of events he could live 
but a few years longer, and those exponents of international 
capitalism who were chiefly interested in Mexico — the Amer- 
ican railroad and mining speculators — were willing to trust to 
finesse in the hope that his successor would prove more amenable 
to their control. As we shall see, it was not until the accession 
of the patriotic Lerdo de Tejada to the presidency of the Re- 
public had blighted the hopes of the American railroad specula- 
tors in this respect that Diaz was summoned to his famous 
three months' conference with them at Brownsville, Texas, 
whence he returned to Mexico fully financed and equipped for 
his first successful, and hence final, assault upon the constitu- 
tional government. 

Throughout all these disturbances the power of the common 
people remained firmly established as the ruling power of the 
nation. In spite of the efforts of the reactionaries to abort 
the national rebirth, and in spite of a series of severe droughts, 
which seriously afllicted agriculture at this time, the work of 
reconstruction went steadily forward. It is true that the period 
was one of transition, and that the people were in process of 
accommodating themselves to a system of landed property en- 
tirely new and strange to them, but such was the general good- 
will that this vast homesteading of a nation was effected almost 
without friction. 

In this connection we take the opportunity of noting a fact 
later to become fraught with tragic import. The peons, un- 
used to legalities, and possessing implicit confidence in the per- 
manence of the constitutional government, considered the 
record of their land made by the municipal authorities for the 
purposes of taxation suflScient documentary evidence to their 
proprietorship, and accordingly made no further effort to estab- 
lish and confirm their titles. Had they not indeed in the con- 
stitution itself the supreme title to that land.^^ What need had 
they of another? But a few years later when Diaz gave au- 
thority to the Mexican and American land speculators to expro- 



278 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

priate all the unrecorded land, this naive failure of the peons 
to record their holdings was made the pretext for dispossessing 
and evicting two millions of them from their lands and homes. 

The constitutional government by no means confined its 
attention to the rational solution of the land question. It con- 
sidered the establishment of a prosperous agrarian democracy 
as only the first if the most fundamental step in the national 
development. Industries were stimulated by the new freedom. 
Mining and weaving began again to assume importance, and 
Juarez, seeing the day when the private and unregulated exploi- 
tation of the means of wealth production, known as the capitalist 
system, would enmesh the nation in a new servitude as narrow 
as the old, vigorously pushed forward the policy laid down 
in the constitution and reenunciated in his own manifesto of 
July, 1859, which aimed at the national construction, ownership, 
and operation of all the means of transportation and commu- 
nication within the country. He recognized that the railroad 
and telegraph completely control industry, and that if the people 
control the government, and the government own the railroad and 
telegraph, the people are in a position to impose their own terms 
upon industrial corporations, pending the ultimate expro- 
priation of all the means of wealth production by the collectivity. 

This was the very essence of the magnificently sane and hu- 
man constructive programme which Juarez contemplated — and 
the prime cause of the new intervention. This policy which guar- 
anteed the economic freedom of the Mexican people shut out the 
foreign speculator. When the American railroad corporations, 
which regarded Mexico as their private booty, saw themselves 
balked by this national railroad policy, initiated under Juarez, 
and faithfully maintained by his successor, Lerdo de Tejada, 
they decided the time for action had come, and gave to Diaz and 
his perverted soldiery their financial and moral support. 

The United States capitalist press at that period never tired 
of ridiculing the great national railroad policy of Juarez, just 
as their successors to-day never weary of lauding Diaz as the 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 279 

"Maker of Mexico," and the author of her wonderful railroad 
system ! The truth is that in President Juarez, Vice-President 
(afterward President) Lerdo de Tejada, and Minister of 
Mexico in the United States Matias Romero, Mexico pos- 
sessed the three greatest practical economists of modern 
times. Forty years ago they foresaw the octopus which 
is strangling the United States to-day, and just as they 
had saved Mexico from the clutches of the Church, the military 
despot, and the feudal aristocrat, so they now strove in the 
light of their keen scientific vision, and in the passion of their 
patriot hearts, to save her from a worse fate at the hands of the 
land speculator, the railroad monopolist, and the industrial 
magnate. They were well aware of the real history of Amer- 
ican railroads. They knew that these roads, built by the 
labour of the common people, financed by the wealth of 
the common people, were the private property of speculators 
who spent neither money nor labour in their construction; they 
saw before their eyes the heavy tribute these roads levied upon 
the nation, and they were fully conversant also with that adroit 
system of mergers, pools, agreements, and interlocking directo- 
rates by which these railroad owners unified and consolidated 
their despotic power over the people. Juarez and his associates 
saw these things clearly and in their real light long before the 
modern "muck-raker" came to elucidate them to the common 
mind, and they would have none of them. If the American 
nation in its strength could endure the capitalist ordeal and 
survive, not so the infant Mexican democracy. 

Juarez, as we have said, was cruelly ridiculed in the American 
press as an ignorant barbarian, suspicious of civilization, and 
endeavouring timorously to withhold Mexico from legitimate 
development. These writers were undoubtedly sincere. They 
took it for granted, as the great majority of their kin to-day 
take it for granted, that development and capitalistic exploitation 
are synonymous. There is even a theory current in the rank 
and file of the Socialist party itself to the effect that all societies 



280 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

in the course of their economic evolution must pass through the 
successive stages of communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, 
and, finally, capitalism as the last step to collectivism. The 
answer to that is, looking backward, all societies have so evolved, 
but, looking forward, no society need now so evolve. Society has 
been compelled to pass through the brutal capitalist stage 
because it knew no better way. And a society, like Mexico, 
bursting its pupa shell of feudalism at a time when world-capi- 
talism h.ad already evolved the science of economics, modern 
industrial machinery, and the full knowledge of the laws which 
governed human production, needed only to take advantage 
of that knowledge to pass from feudalism directly into collectiv- 
ism. There was no reason in heaven or earth why it should 
toil through the byway of capitalism to arrive at a knowledge 
already to hand. Having once proved that two times two are 
four, we do not have to verify our formula every time we use it. 
Indeed there is neither economic, sociological, or psychological 
reason why Mexico or any nation to-day in feudalism shall not 
effect the gradual but direct transition to collectivism — i. e., 
the collective ownership and the administration of the means 
of wealth production. 

Juarez understood this. His railroad policy was not meant 
merely to save Mexico from the ordeal of foreign railroad spec- 
ulation, but to sav^ her from the whole needless ordeal of cap- 
italism, and lead her in the light of the knowledge won under 
capitalism by the other nations of the earth into the promised 
land of collectivism by a direct if gradual transition. That 
this glorious consummation was never fulfilled is due abso- 
lutely and entirely to the American railroad and industrial 
corporations of 1867 and to Porfirio Diaz, their tool. 

Not only did Juarez, as the expression of the will of the people, 
carry into effect the great fundamental principle of that people's 
constitution — namely, free and universal access to the land — 
not only did he carry out the second great principle, the national 
construction, ownership, and operation of the means of trans- 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 281 

portation and communication, but he carried out the third 
great principle, that education shall be free, adequate, universal, 
and non-sectarian, by establishing throughout the land in every 
city, town, and village, and even hamlet, a chain of free public 
schools, staffed by the most cultivated and devoted men and 
women of the day. The fact that Juarez himself was a full- 
blooded Zapoteca, an offshoot of the Aztec race, and the majority 
of his advisers were of the same stock is profoundly signifi- 
cant in view of this educational policy. None knew better than 
they the vigour and brilliancy of the native mind; none under- 
stood better than they the thirst of the people for knowledge. 
Within a few years of the establishment of these schools the 
intellectual ardour of the ancient Mexican races, repressed and 
choked for four hundred years, had burst forth in a veritable 
national renaissance. Indeed, all Mexico's modern achieve- 
ments in the fields of philosophy, science, art, and technology 
spring from this period — a period in which she gave to her 
children even in the remotest villages the free services of her 
brightest spirits as educators, and ranked those educators in 
emoluments and prestige with the highest officers of the public 
service. That these public educators were influenced by the 
sheer love of their labour, and the desire to aid in the unfolding 
of the spirit of the race, to the utter disregard of the financial 
reward, is vividly shown in the fact that when Diaz deliberately 
ruined this school system of Juarez, 80 per cent, of these educa- 
tors continued their labour without pay for two years, and, in- 
deed, would have continued indefinitely had not Diaz discharged 
them and ordered the schools to be closed. No more striking 
contrast between the spirit that is democracy, and love, and 
enlightenment, and the spirit which is autocracy, brutality, and 
ignorance could be drawn than this incident affords. To the 
American railroad speculators and the American industrial 
corporations, interested in exploiting Mexican labour and re- 
sources, an educated Mexico was an intolerable menace, and 
through the medium of their personal representative, Porfirio 



282 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Diaz, they plunged the people into the depths of ignorance and 
slavery and held them there. To Diaz himself the annihilation 
of education was a jest. "Compadre Porfirio," said his crony, 
the notorious Gonzalez, "if the time comes that I want to put 
you out of the way I will make you a school teacher and let you 
die of starvation." And both laughed at the joke! 

In spite of the severe droughts of those years, and the conse- 
quent widespread destruction of crops, such was the economic 
and honest handling of the national finances by the Juarez ad- 
ministration, that not only were all the necessary expenses of 
the government duly covered, but a considerable surplus was 
put to reserve for the construction of the national railways. 

"During the period of the constitutional rule from 1867 to 
1871," says one historian, "in spite of the difficulties which 
sprang up at every step, and the military mutinies and cuar- 
telazos which embarrassed the work of social reconstruction, 
a number of material improvements of far-reaching importance 
were accomplished, and a still larger number were inaugurated. 
The system of legislation was reformed; new civil and penal codes 
were established; the national treasury system was improved 
and treaties were made with the United States, Germany, and 
Italy; while, notwithstanding the unusual drain upon the ex- 
chequer involved in the suppression of the military revolts, all 
the state administration expenditures were covered without 
recourse to extraordinary taxation, and a great part of the new 
Mexican National railroad was built. . . ." (Gustavo Baz, 
" Vida de Juarez," p. 230.) 

The great burden of the fraudulent foreign debts still weighed 
heavily on the country. At the time of the intervention of the 
allies these debts, it will be remembered, had been prudently 
recognized by Juarez on behalf of Mexico as national obliga- 
tions to the English, French, and Spanish governments. But 
the action of these governments in subsequently recognizing 
Maximilian was a breach of neutrality according to interna- 
tional law, and constituted good grounds for Mexico's repudia- 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 283 

tion of their claims. Juarez, however, with characteristic 
wisdom, preserved the dignity of the nation, and at the same 
time avoided a clash with the allies by refusing to recognize 
these debts as obligations to the English, French, and Spanish 
governments as such, but only as obligations due to the individ- 
ual creditors of those countries. Under this arrangement he 
called the creditors together for an agreement of settlement at 
the discretion of the Mexican Government. 

During the few brief years of the Restoration period vast 
strides were made toward the realization of the Constitution of 
1857 on the plane of practical affairs. Juarez and his cabinet, 
supported by the agrarian democracy, by the citizens and intel- 
lectuals, toiled at their task of national reconstruction with an 
ardour, faith, and wisdom unsurpassed in history. 

The renaissance which followed the economic and intellectual 
emancipation of the people found the fullest expression under a 
regime of complete freedom of speech and press. Never has 
the intellectual heritage of Mexico given such proof of its vital- 
ity and power as during these years. Then there sprang from 
the genius of the race, as it were, in a night all those splendid 
creations in the fields of science, art, and literature which have 
won for Mexico her rightful place among the intellectual nations 
of the earth. All that Mexico has produced of worth was pro- 
duced at this time or later as a result of the intellectual impetus 
imparted to society at this time. If then the social genius of 
the Mexican people had awaked, if it had thus begun to expand 
with a vigour fraught with all promise, whence came the sordid 
shambles, unillumined, ungraced, except by the reckless valour 
of the peons which we know as Mexico to-day .^^ 

Let Zayas Enriquez, the friend and eulogist of Diaz, reply to 
that question. "This profound desire for peace began in the 
time of Juarez when the empire had been destroyed, and with it 
the reactionary party. Juarez himself would have accorded j 
peace if we Porfiristas had not hindered him with our systematic j 
and unbridled opposition and our disorderly outbreaks . ' ' (Zayas / 



284 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Enriquez, "Porfirio Diaz," p. 120.) And these "disorderly 
outbreaks " were destined later to become, under the providence 
of international capitalism, the darkest despotism the world 
has known. That is the reason of the "Barbarous Mexico" 
we know to-day. 

Toward the year 1872 the health of Juarez began to fail. 
Heart weakness, coupled with the shock caused by the death of 
his wife, to whom he was the most devoted husband, hastened 
the end. "It seems that Juarez," says Bancroft, "had a pre- 
sentiment that his own end was near; for in conversing with his 
friends he expressed regret that it would be out of his power to 
reconstruct the affairs of his country, wherein he said almost 
every effort hitherto had been directed to destroy. Neverthe- 
less amidst all the turmoil he was beginning to see the realiza- 
tion of his heartfelt wish for peace when death overtook him." 
(Bancroft, "History of Mexico," Vol. 6, p. 385.) On the 18th 
of July, 1872, he died. Juarez was a fully developed man; in 
other words, a genius; but it must never be forgotten that true 
genius is collective in impulse if individual in expression. 
Wherever it be found it is invariably the focus of the high ener- 
gies of the great multitude of common people. The products 
of such genius may not be regarded as individual, but as the very 
expression of the mass in their struggle for development. 

Juarez was mourned by the nation with a profound sorrow, 
darkened and embittered by presentiments of evil days to come. 
Lerdo de Tejada, as president of the Supreme Court, and thus 
interim President of the Republic, summoned the people, ac- 
cording to the law, for presidential elections to be held on the 
13th and 27th of October, 1872, at the same time proclaiming 
a general amnesty to all rebels and political offenders in order 
that no unfairness to his opponents might taint the elections. 

Porfirio Diaz, who since the collapse of the Plan de la Noria 
had remained hiding in the mountains of Tepic, consorting 
with a band of desperadoes under Manuel Lozada, refused the 
magnanimous offer of Tejada, in the hope of casting a stain 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 285 

upon the legality of the elections and of exalting himself in the 
eyes of the nation. Later, however, when he found that society 
had forgotten him, he yielded, and Tejada was so chivalrous 
as to restore him to full military rank as a general of the regular 
army. In due time the elections were held and Lerdo de Tejada 
was placed in office by an almost unanimous vote of the people. 
Bancroft, in spite of his glorification of Diaz and hence depre- 
ciation of the great Constitutionalists, Juarez and Tejada, hon- 
estly describes the reason for the people's choice of president 
in this election when he says: "The people were inclined to 
associate him (Lerdo de Tejada) in great part with the benefi- 
cent poHcy of the recent administration. . . . the country 
had suffered so severely under the bad management of military 
chieftains that the majority regarded these candidates as un- 
fitted for the presidential office, and as inclined to give a danger- 
ous preference to the army." (Bancroft, "Porfirio Diaz, Su 
Biografia," p. 89.) 

A few days after the presidential inauguration construction 
began on the railroad between Mexico City and Vera Cruz, 
the first step toward the materialization of the constitutional 
principle which established the democratic construction, owner- 
ship, and operation of the national railroads. 

With the submission of Diaz and his subsequent restoration 
to military rank, peace was restored throughout the country. 
In Lerdo de Tejada and his cabinet the people had executives 
devoted to the constitution and unwearying in their efforts to 
realize its principles in the economic and social life of the country. 
Under their administration the agrarian democracy continued 
to flourish and expand, and the last traces of peonage, which had 
still lingered in some parts of the country owing to the dense 
ignorance of the people, were thoroughly destroyed; the national 
construction of railroads was vigorously promoted, and the 
educational system founded by Juarez was fostered and devel- 
oped. In cooperation with the national Congress, the state 
legislatures and executives, and even with the city and rural 



286 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

councils, the administration continued to enforce the indepen- 
dence of Church and State, the freedom of rehgious creed, the 
full establishment of marriage as a civil contract, the suppres- 
sion of religious oath and the clerical disabilities in respect to 
the acquisition of land. In spite of the peace and prosperity 
of the country, however, the government recognized that the 
reactionary faction still constituted a serious menace to the 
established order. They considered indeed that no social 
stability would be possible until the complete suppression of the 
soldiery had become an accomplished fact. Meanwhile they 
resolutely denied the soldiery and their reactionary allies any 
share in the government affairs. The attitude of the adminis- 
tration is aptly summed up by the Porfirista, Zayas Enriquez, 
when he says: "Lerdo was like Juarez in that he was the most 
vigorous advocate of civil administration as opposed to mil- 
itarism.'* (Zayas Enriquez, "Porfirio Diaz," p. 110.) 

But the unprecedented liberty which characterized the new 
democratic system only served to embolden the reactionaries 
in their attacks upon the government, and in their intrigues for 
its overthrow. As we have said, imperialists, big land-owners, 
clergy, lawyer agents of the American railroad speculators, out- 
laws, and professional bandits clustered around the main pha- 
lanx — the perverted soldiery, forming a faction diverse enough 
in its composition but a unit in its desire to overthrow the hated 
reign of economic freedom, prosperity, and peace established 
under the constitution, and to substitute therefor an era of brig- 
andage, presided over by Diaz and protected by the power of 
international finance. 

Yet another element was destined to add strength to this 
disaffected element. Mexico was now experiencing a bountiful 
prosperity. The productive power of the people had increased 
tenfold under the new economic freedom, while to the years of 
drought and the painful restoration of the devastated farms had 
succeeded years of plentiful rain and rich harvests. This ac- 
cumulating wealth of the people was regarded with covetous 



AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY 287 

eyes by the speculators and rising industrial capitalists of the 
time. Under the stern hand of the constitutional government 
their desire to appropriate this wealth and exploit the workers 
remained unsatisfied, and they accordingly threw their whole 
weight into the support of the reactionary faction, thereby 
adding very materially to its strength. 

Since the restoration of Diaz to his military rank the soldiers 
had been disciplining and organizing their forces, while the 
clergy as perniciously active as ever had been preaching sedition 
from every pulpit, inflaming the natives of the remoter districts 
with the old cry of "holy war." The nuns had endeavoured to 
organize their monastic and conventual orders again, and 
the government had been compelled to suppress them with 
severity. This, of course, gave an additional strength to the 
reactionary faction, while every criminal and outlaw in the 
country continued to flock to its standard. 

Porfirio Diaz meanwhile drew his salary as a general in the 
government army, held aloof from politics, and perfected his 
plans for the future. While outwardly taking no part in the re- 
actionary agitation, in secret he harassed the government con- 
tinually by instigating mutinies and religious riots. His main 
business at this time, however, was the debauching of the army, 
with the view of leading it into a powerful cuartelazo against 
the government when the opportune moment for a coup d'etat 
should arrive. 



Juarez and the members of the constitutional government 
had fully recognized that the real menace to the civil authority 
lay in the soldiery. The Church and Aristocracy had been 
crushed under the rule of the empire never again to raise their 
heads as the controlling force in the nation. But in a new form 
militarism still remained, and it was against this surviving evil 
that they directed their efforts, while cooperating with the 
people in the work of economic and social reconstruction. It 



288 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

was necessary, of course, that an adequate standing army 
should be maintained for the nonce, if only to oppose this law- 
less element; but there is incontestable proof in the documents of 
the period that the great majority of the veteran patriots who 
composed this standing army were not only loyal to the con- 
stitutional government, and free from collusion with the antiso- 
cial element which made Porfirio Diaz their tool, but were so 
far imbued with the spirit of democracy and reverence for the 
civil authority as to endorse the government proposals for their 
own suppression whenever their services should no longer be 
required for the maintenance of order. They themselves were 
at one with the constitutional government in upholding the prin- 
ciple that a standing army, no matter how loyal, is by its very 
existence a menace to a free society; and they regarded with 
full approval the administrative policy which aimed at the ul- 
timate suppression of the army, and the restoration of the old 
bodies of civicos or national guard for the purposes of main- 
taining domestic order or resisting foreign invasion.* 

To aid in this patriotic undertaking, and to offset the intrigues 
of the reactionaries, a special Masonic order, called the Mexican 
National Rite, was created, and provision made for its estab- 
lishment throughout the country. To international capitalism 
in the person of American, British, and French railroad and 
industrial speculators, acting through their tools, the soldiery 
under Porfirio Diaz, is directly due the failure of these great 
plans. Neither the suppression of the army, the restoration of 
the civicos, nor the establishment of the Mexican National 
"Jlite was destined to be materialized. Before the constitu- 
tional government could thus strengthen itself the foreign hand 
had struck, not openly as in former invasions and interventions, 
but in shelter, silence, and stealth, as is the modern way. 



*Our researches in this matter brought to light a surprisingly complete corre- 
spondence between President Juarez and the officers of the republican army, 
particularly with Generals Ignacio Pesqueira and Jose Maria Morales, in which 
the government's plans for the suppression of the army and the restoration of 
the civicos were freely and fully discussed. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE DIAZ CUARTELAZO 

DURING President Lerdo de Tejada's first term of office 
the Diaz faction had thoroughly organized and disciplined their 
forces. Recognizing that the people would have none of them, 
that their cause, as a political movement, was dead, they 
abandoned all attempts at constitutional action and concen- 
trated their attention upon preparations for a coup d'Stat. 
President Lerdo de Tejada's unblemished record in office had 
marked him out for certain reelection, and the Diaz faction, fore- 
seeing in that event a reaffirmation of the popular will, and the 
strengthening of the hands of the government most dangerous 
to the success of their conspiracy, decided to strike while there 
was yet time. Accordingly, early in the new year, 1876, the 
signal was given and cuartelazos burst forth in all parts of the 
country. In Lower California the soldiery overthrew the 
constitutional governor and installed their leader, Colonel 
Emiliano Ibarra, in his place; the garrisons at Tepic and a num- 
ber of other cities mutinied, while in Mexico City several gen- 
erals of the regular army were arrested for endeavouring to 
excite the garrison to revolt. The movement culminated 
on the 15th of January, 1876, when General Fidencio Her- 
nandez headed a powerful uprising at Oaxaca, proclaimed Gen- 
eral Porfirio Diaz as commander-in-chief of the revolution, and 
promulgated the programme of the revolution in the Plan de 
Tuxtepec, so called from the name of the city in which it was 
signed. The principles of this programme, henceforth the 
accepted standard of the Porfiristas, were as follows : 



290 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

I. The amendment of the constitution to prohibit the re- 
election of the President of the RepubUc and the governors of 
the states. 

II. The discharge of Lerdo de Tejada from the presidency of 
the RepubHc. 

III . The appointment of the commander-in-chief of the revolu- 
tionary army to the interim presidency pending a presidential 
election. 

IV. The discharge of the governors of the states opposed to the 
Plan de Tuxtepec, and the appointment of successors at the 
discretion of the commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army. 

The enunciation of these principles was preambled by a savage 
attack upon the constitutional government accusing Lerdo de 
Tejada among many other charges — of endeavouring to sell 
Mexico to the United States! 

At the beginning of the revolt Porfirio Diaz crossed the border 
to the safety of Brownsville, Texas, where he remained from 
December, 1875, to March 12, 1876, in daily conference with 
the agents of the American railroad speculators, the emissaries 
of Wall Street, and of Washington. 

Meanwhile cuartelazos had broken out in favour of the Plan 
de Tuxtepec under Generals Donato Guerra and Gal van in the 
State of Jalisco, under Generals Mendez Bonilla and Carrillo in 
Puebla, under Colonel Garcia in Vera Cruz, under General 
Canto in Yucatan, under General Rocha in San Luis Potosi, and 
under General Couttolenne in Guerrero. The government, 
however, continued to hold the situation well in hand, severely 
defeating the rebellious soldiery in a number of engagements and 
driving them into the hills. In March, 1876, Generals Trevino 
and Naranjo headed an uprising of the garrison at Matamoros, 
a town immediately opposite Brownsville on the Mexican side of 
the line, and Porfirio Diaz, having satisfied himself it was safe 
to return, crossed the border. Upon hearing of the approach 
of the loyal troops under General Escobedo, the vanquisher of 
the imperialist army, he fled to New Orleans, whence, after 



THE DIAZ CUARTELAZO 291 

perfecting his arrangements for the betrayal of Mexico into the 
hands of the American speculators, he embarked on board the 
steamer City of Havana for Tampico. Upon his arrival at 
that port he was recognized by some officers of the loyal army 
and only saved froin arrest by claiming the United States' protec- 
tion. In speaking of this incident, Bancroft says: *'Diaz, 
having grasped the situation, called upon the captain to afford 
him the protection of the American flag." (Bancroft, "Porfirio 
Diaz, Su Biografia," p. 502.) Thus protected, he withdrew 
from Tampico and sailed to Vera Cruz, whence he again dis- 
embarked under cover of the American flag, and proceeded to 
join the rebel forces at Oaxaca. 

While the fate of the revolt was thus hanging in the balance 
Lerdo de Tejada's first term of office expired and new presi- 
dential elections were announced. Under the critical circum- 
stances the President stood for reelection unopposed and was 
elected to his second term by an almost unanimous vote of the 
people the 26th of October, 1876. 

His resumption of office was immediately followed by re- 
newed military outbreaks. Suddenly, on November 20th, 
scarcely a naonth after the government had proclaimed him its 
chief executive for the second time, Lerdo de Tejada resigned 
the presidency and left Mexico City for Acapulco, whence he 
embarked at once for New York. 

The desertion of the President at such a crucial moment gave 
new life to the revolt and demoralized the Constitutionalist 
defence. Under the circumstances a great part of the loyal 
army joined the Diaz faction, and the remainder gave up the 
fight. In vain Jose Maria Iglesias, President of the Supreme 
Court, and hence interim President of the Republic, endeav- 
oured to cope with the situation. In the face of a large rebel 
army, fully equipped and financed by foreign interests, resist- 
ance was impossible. On the 23d of November, 1876, Diaz 
entered Mexico City at the head of his army, and had himseK 
proclaimed provisional President of the Republic. Two months 



292 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

later, January 28, 1877, a farcical congressional election was 
held, and the Congress thus elected under the muzzles of the 
rebel guns declared Porfirio Diaz President of Mexico by the 
unanimous vote of the people, May 2, 1877. 



The entrance of Diaz into Mexico City brought to an end 
the brief glorious reign of the people and inaugurated the un- 
broken rule of the speculator and military despot. It anni- 
hilated "Civilized Mexico" and substituted in its place the 
"Barbarous Mexico" we know to-day. 

The period 1867 to 1876, beginning with the Restoration 
and ending with the triumph of the Diaz cuartelazo, as we have 
seen, was one of the brightest periods in the history of modern 
civilization, not only in actual accomplishment but in good 
augury for the future. True, the turbulence of the reaction- 
aries of the Diaz faction had obstructed the process of social 
reconstruction, but the power of the people was a real power; 
if it had been used to its fullest extent the Diaz faction would 
have been annihilated. This much is admitted by every writer, 
reactionary or radical, who has ever treated the subject; it 
is admitted by even the most biased of the Diaz eulogists. 
How, then, are we to explain the national impotence in face of 
the cuartelazo .'^ Why did not the people exert their power 
to destroy this element which threatened their dearly bought 
democratic institutions ? Why did they not sustain a govern- 
ment which they had unanimously placed in power .^^ Why 
did President Lerdo de Tejada thus unreasonably forsake his 
trust? 

The reader who has grasped the analyses set forth in the 
chapter on the Restoration of the Republic has already divined 
the answer: The national 'passion for the fatherland, and the 
consequent terror of the people in face of a possible United States 
intervention. The reactionary faction faced nothing but ex- 
tinction until Diaz went to Brownsville in Texas for his famous 



Enrique C. Creel 



Jose Y. Limantour 




Ramon Corral 

THE SCIENTIFICOS 
These three men were leaders in the Diaz administration of " Scientificos." 
Corral was Vice-President, Limantour was Minister of Finance, 
and Creel, Minister of Foreign Affairs 



THE DIAZ CUARTELAZO 293 

conference with the American raihoad speculators, and the 
agents of Wall Street and Washington. This movement, closely 
watched and widely published by the constitutional press 
in Mexico, struck terror into the Mexican people. They knew 
at once what had happened. They recognized that hence- 
forth if they would uphold their institutions they must deal 
not merely with a small disaffected element headed by a mili- 
tary adventurer, but with the mighty foreign hand. It was a 
prospect fraught with all hopelessness. They bowed their 
heads in bitter resignation, and their President — rather than 
resist the power of American finance and thereby invite another 
devastating invasion of the fatherland — resigned and left the 
country. This — the fear of United States intervention — and 
this alone is the reason for the success of the Diaz cuartelazo 
and the reason for the Mexican people's dumb submission 
through thirty-four long years to the despotism of Diaz, the 
scientificos, and foreign speculators. 

The Diaz victory was therefore not the result of a popular 
movement for change or reform, but a mere cowp d'etat sup- 
ported by a handful of discontented soldiers. This is admitted 
by Zayas Enriquez, a Diaz eulogist: "The Porfirista revolution was 
not really popular, and, as I have said, Lerdo fell more on account 
of his own lack of faith and skepticism than because of any popu- 
lar sympathy with the Revolution.'* ("Porfirio Diaz," p. 195.) 
In response to the question, "To whom was the triumph of the 
Revolution due?" Enriquez answers: "It is difficult to give 
a categorical reply to such a question; but I honestly think it 
was due rather to the stupidity of the government, the skepti- 
cism of Lerdo, and the lack of confidence of the army than to 
the political and military skill of General Diaz and the efforts 
of his followers.'* {Ihid., p. 123.) 

Diaz, the leader in this revolution, was not a man of large 
vision, anxious to safeguard the public interests while develop- 
ing the resources of the country. He was not a man of educa- 
tion and cultivation; to him history and economics were sealed 



294 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

mysteries. From the beginning to the end, his vision was the 
vision of the barrack yard. Of the capitalist movement which 
filled his term of dictatorship he was the creature, not the intel- 
ligent creator. The truth of this statement is attested by Dr. 
Lara Pardo, a man closely associated with Diaz and possessing 
an intimate knowledge of his character: "For myself, knowing 
how little the Dictator understood the benefits the railroads 
might bring, and seeing him constantly favour the most inane 
schemes and oppose the most beneficial plans for the nation, 
when unsupported by foreign pressure or the supplications of 
his friends, his glorification becomes a myth. In my regard 
these exploits (the introduction of American railroads) which 
have been so greatly exaggerated, simply show that when his 
triumph was consummated the American interests were prompt 
to compel the new ruler to fulfil his promises of generous con- 
cessions." ("Dr. Luis Lara Pardo, De Porfirio Diaz a Francisco 
Madero.") 

Such a revolution, carried out by such a man would never 
have succeeded if it had not been for the aid which he received 
from capitalistic interests in the United States. On this point 
Dr. Pardo who was, as we have said, intimately associated with 
Diaz, writes: *'It is beyond doubt that in the United States 
General Diaz received the military supplies for the troops with 
which he opposed the government in the struggle. It is certain 
that he obtained moral support there; it is also incontestable 
that he obtained the direct support of the American interests 
offering in exchange free-hand concessions. . . . The his- 
tory of his government is the most complete confirmation of 
this statement. In an interview published by the newspaper 
El Imparcial it is seen that Diaz's first action after his occupa- 
tion of the capital was to sign the contract for the construction 
of the Central Railroad. ("Porfirio Diaz a Francisco Madero," 
p. 17.) 

Finally the revolution, brought about by such a leader, sup- 
ported by such sinister interests, was maintained by the constant 



THE DIAZ CUARTELAZO 295 

threats of Diaz that any disturbance of his rule would bring 
intervention from the United States. This is no figment of 
the imagination. It is admitted by Enriquez, in his panegyric 
on Diaz: "This served also as a powerful check upon the tur- 
bulent elements of the interior, to make them understand that 
any one who conspires against the government [the Diaz gov- 
ernment] might thereby precipitate American intervention, 
thus endangering the nationality of Mexico itself. This has 
been in reality one of the principal factors in the pacification 
of the country and the maintenance of permanent peace." 
To sum up, we have established : 

1. That from 1867 to 1876 the Mexican people were in the full 
enjoyment of constitutional rule : that in spite of the turbulence 
of a small disaffected faction there was peace, in spite of drought, 
prosperity, and that society had firmly established itself upon 
the basis of a developing agrarian democracy. 

2. That the people having achieved this democracy only 
after fifty-seven years of the most bloody struggle against the 
Church, the Army, and Aristocracy, and against the foreign 
hand, were now deeply anxious for peace, and that they enforced 
that peace. 

3. That the people's government not only upheld and enforced 
the constitution, but devoted itself unremittingly to the task of 
national reconstruction in the light of that constitution. 

4. That in accordance with one of the fundamental principles 
of the constitution and of the Leyes de Reforma, and in full har- 
mony with the spirit of both, the government had entered upon 
a policy which aimed at the national construction, ownership, 
and operation of the railroads, not only as a means to protect the 
people from the foreign speculator, but as a means to protect 
them from the despotism of the capitalist system, and to lay the 
path for their gradual transition to a purely collective adminis- 
tration as the normal development of an agrarian democracy. 

5. That the only disorderly element in the nation was the 
heterogeneous party composed of the defeated imperialists, the 



296 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

disgruntled clergy, the perverted soldiery, and the foreign 
capitalist agents, who made Diaz their figure-head. 

6. That this disa^ffected faction, with the direct moral and 
financial support of the American railroad, industrial, and land 
speculators, and with the deliberate cognizance and connivance 
of the United States Government took advantage of the still 
unrecovered condition of the people and of their passion for 
peace and their terror of renewed foreign invasion to overthrow 
this constitutional government and destroy this enlightened 
democracy by the infamous method of the cuartelazo. 



CHAPTER XXI 
PORFIRIO DIAZ, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO 

THUS we have Porfirio Diaz President of Mexico by the 
grace of American "Big Business" through the immediate in- 
strumentahty of an unpopular army revolt, and as a direct 
result of the national fear of United States intervention. Con- 
sequently, from the day of his entry into Mexico City in 1876, 
to the day of his flight to Paris in 1910, thirty-four years later, 
Diaz was supported positively by the psychological power of the 
clergy and the subsidized press, by the physical power of the 
Army, and by the economic power of the United States and 
Europe; negatively by the impotence of the people in face of an 
ever impending United States invasion. Consequently, also 
as quid pro quo of their support, these three body-guards of the 
new regime — the clergy, the army and the foreign speculators 
— enjoyed throughout this period unrestricted license in the 
exploitation of the national wealth and the enslavement of the 
people. 

The first action of Diaz in power was the establishment of 
military rule, with the consequent forcible expulsion from Con- 
gress of every representative who insisted on expressing the will 
of the people, or who refused to be bought. Thus was the 
national council reduced as in the days of Bustamante to "an 
assembly of lackeys." The governors who refused to yield 
up the independence of their states were arrested by the soldiery 
and flung into jail, and their places were filled by military com- 
manders. At first, in view of the great strength of the agrarian 
democratic states of the north and south, their independence 

297 



298 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

was respected, but strong military contingents were dispatched 
to garrison their principal cities, and to watch for an opportu- 
nity to force them into line with the new regime. The situation 
thus produced was similar in many respects to the clerical- 
military despotisms of Bustamante and Santa Ana; and now, as 
then, men who were neither priests nor soldiers were the real 
brains of the government. If Santa Ana had his Lucas Alaman 
to instruct him in paths pleasant to the Church, Porfirio Diaz 
had his Justo Benitez to instruct him in the paths pleasant to 
the foreign speculator. In both cases was there an alliance 
of stupidity and ferocity with polished craft and subtilty. 

The common people, although filled with solicitude for the in- 
tegrity of their institutions, dumbly submitted to the new an- 
archy rather than face the terrible alternative. United States 
intervention. But it was not for several years — not, indeed, 
until they found themselves suddenly dispossessed of their land 
— that they realized the magnitude of the disaster which had 
befallen them. 

The workers, it must be remembered, had not the opportun- 
ity of the exploiters for comprehending the march of events 
and cherishing their own welfare. The common people of 
Mexico at this time were still in possession of the land, a land 
that yielded them a bountiful sustenance, and they continued 
patiently to labour upon it, trusting that one of those swift 
changes of which their history was full would come to restore 
their Golden Age to them. In this belief they were doomed to 
bitter disappointment. The people's Constitution of 1857 had 
established as its basic principle the superiority of Man Right 
over Property Right. From this time Property Right began 
the invasion of the social field, until little by little Man Right 
had altogether vanished, and the complete enslavement of the 
masses had been accomplished. 

In this gradual demolition of the magnificent democratic 
system of the Restoration, the Diaz cabal wisely deferred their 
attack upon the agrarian statutes until the right moment. 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 299 

That moment naturally would be the occasion of some deliber- 
ately provoked pseudo-crisis between Mexico and the United 
States which would intensify the dread possibility of interven- 
tion in the minds of the people and paralyze their resistance. 
Pending this convenient occasion the government proceeded to 
entrench itself, and at the same time make of the nation a 
booty of war by filling all public oflSces with members of the new 
faction, and by imposing a crushing taxation upon the people 
to pay for the lavish upkeep of the army — in which, as of old, 
officers outnumbered men. 

In this race for plunder, however, the United States specula- 
tors outdistanced all competitors. Scarcely had the obedient 
Congress proclaimed Diaz President of Mexico than the agents 
of the American railroad interests appeared upon the scene 
to demand the immediate reward of their services in placing 
him in power. Diaz was as prompt to comply as they to de- 
mand, and free-hand concessions to build two main lines, one 
from Laredo and the other from El Paso to Mexico City were 
immediately handed over to them. 

By the terms of these concessions they were allowed to choose 
their own routes, and to build the lines without government 
supervision. Free lands were given them for the rights of 
way, together with a construction subsidy of eight thousand 
dollars per kilometer on level ground and twenty thousand 
dollars per kilometer in rough country ! When we consider that 
the Mexican dollar at that time was at par with the American 
dollar, that the company used only the cheapest of materials 
in the construction of the line, and had, moreover, the advantage 
of forced labour at 50 cents a day; when we consider also that they 
built the line in the most tortuous fashion possible in order to in- 
crease the total mileage and thus the total subsidy, and when 
finally we consider that this concession was only the first of a 
long series of such granted by Diaz to the American railroad 
interests in return for their support and a personal share of 
the profits, we shall appreciate the anxiety of these interests 



300 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

to place him in power, to sustain him in power, and to hold 
him up before the eyes of the world as a demigod, a modern 
Messiah, the " Maker of Mexico ! " 

With the granting of these railroad concessions, however, the 
Diaz government had by no means satisfied its American sup- 
porters. Behind the railroad speculators now appeared large 
numbers of the smaller speculators eager for a share of the spoils. 
There were no railroad concessions for these, but not to be 
balked, they proceeded to revive and invent all kinds of claims 
for damages against Mexico, and to foist them upon the Diaz 
faction with the concurrence of the United States Government. 
Somewhat hastily assuming that their good will was of no in- 
considerable importance to the maintenance of the status quo 
in Mexico, they imagined that the Diaz government would sub- 
mit to be blackmailed without a protest. 

"In regard," says Bancroft, "to the two thousand claims that 
were laid before the commission, representing the sum of 
$556,788,600, the great portion of them were fictitious, and the 
legitimate of them exorbitant. The joint commission opened 
up a field of peculation to every class of rascal. Every device 
was practised to rob one government or the other, the claimants 
hesitating not at all at perjury or forgery." (Bancroft, "His- 
tory of Mexico," Vol. 6, p. 444.) 

The outcome proved that the smaller speculators had over- 
estimated their importance in the scale of events. A joint com- 
mission of the American and Mexican governments was formed 
to ajudicate upon these claims. Meanwhile Justo Benitez and 
his political associates, in collusion with certain interests at 
Washington, took advantage of the situation to work up the 
long desired war scare as a preliminary move to the wholesale 
eviction of the people from their lands. On the pretext that 
the enormous taxation imposed on the Mexican people was 
working injustice upon American citizens resident in Mexico, 
and other similar pretexts. Secretary Foster, with the approval 
of President Hayes, ordered troops to the border. 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 301 

Benitez adroitly played to the United States lead by instruct- 
ing Diaz also to send troops to the border. In this manner a 
very good semblance of an international crisis was produced, 
with a highly disciplinary effect upon the Mexican people. The 
matter of the claims, however, had become such a stench 
in the public nostrils that the joint commission discreetly 
smothered a vast number of them, allowing, indeed, only four 
million dollars out of the original sum of $556,788,600. The 
Diaz government paid this amount promptly, glad to have 
secured such valuable aid in terrorizing the people at such a low 
cost. But later, in view of the fact that no justification could 
be found for even this small amount, the United States Govern- 
ment cancelled it and restored it in part. 

Subsequent to the Conquest the kings of Spain had granted 
to the municipalities of Mexico the right to use the belt of land 
immediately surrounding their townships as communal property 
for pasture and tilth. These communal lands, or egidos (shields) , 
were of great service to the peons and poor townsfolk in eking 
out their miserable existence. Here they cut their fuel, pas- 
tured such few cattle as they possessed, and cultivated small 
patches of grain and vegetables. Even in the darkest days of 
the colonial regime and of the subsequent clerical and military 
despotisms the Church and the big land-owners had respected 
the egidos, while the Constitution of 1857 had endorsed the 
original grants and enforced their maintenance. It was not 
until the Diaz faction came into power that this elemental right 
of the municipalities to the communal lands was attacked. 
Under cover of the threatened United States invasion, to which 
we have referred, while the people were waiting tensely for the 
dread news that the American army had crossed the border, 
some land speculators of the Diaz faction seized the egidos of 
Juchitan, and a number of neighbouring towns of the State of 
Oaxaca, and proceeded to fence and occupy them. The in- 
habitants appealed to the authorities without response. Fail- 
ing, after repeated attempts, to receive redress, they resorted 



302 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

to arms. Whereupon President Diaz rushed troops into the 
district, and a wholesale massacre ensued, in which over five 
hundred of the protesting villagers perished. The news of this 
atrocity spread in a flash to all parts of the country. Wide- 
spread revolt seemed imminent. Bid at that moment President 
Hayes of the United States, in complicity with the Diaz faction, 
ordered General Ord to move his troops across the border, and the 
people became at once dumb and submissive. A little later the 
remnants of the loyal army in the states of Guerrero, Vera Cruz, 
Campeche, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Sonora rose in arms 
against the government, under the leadership of the veteran 
patriots. Generals Alvarez Pesqueira Escobedo and Amador, 
but again the spectre of United States invasion loomed out of 
the north and the movement collapsed. 

It must be remembered that the American and Mexican 
governments then, as now, were at the back of the American 
and Mexican railroad, industrial, and land speculators. This 
coalition, having tested its solidarity and fully realized its 
power in the massacre of Juchitan, and the overthrow of the 
loyal army revolt, drew the bonds of union still closer, and pro- 
ceeded to the deliberate wholesale demolition of the Mexican 
agrarian democracy, accompanied by the swift extermination 
of every trace of opposition. 

The grim and bloody efficiency of this new vast Machine 
became speedily manifest. In 1879 a group of young men in 
Vera Cruz organized a political movement for the reestablish- 
ment of the constitution. At the same time it happened that a 
mutiny broke out on the gunboats Libertad and Independencia, 
stationed in the harbour. The governor of Vera Cruz, General 
Luis Mier y Teran, one of the foremost adherents of the Diaz 
faction, deliberately charged this little group of political re- 
formers with complicity in the mutiny. When the case was 
tried the federal judge, Rafael Zayas Enriquez, who sat upon 
the case, although a reactionary and a personal friend of Diaz, 
was compelled to pronounce the charge unfounded in view of 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 303 

complete lack of evidence to the contrary. This, however, 
failed to satisfy Teran, and he telegraphed his own account of 
the affair to Diaz, requesting instructions. Diaz, without an 
attempt at investigation, returned the prompt and laconic reply: 
*' Shoot them!" 

Accordingly the doomed men were dragged from their beds 
at midnight, torn from their wives and children, and haled to 
the barracks in their night clothes. Here they were turned 
loose in the yard and shot to death like rabbits by the soldiery. 
Judge Rafael Zayas Enriquez forgets for a moment his role of 
Diaz eulogist when he says in regard to this incident: "The 
immediate effect of this Bacchanalian orgy of blood was to 
strike terror to the hearts of all conspirators. That the feeling 
was deep and lasting is proven by the fact that it is still felt 
to-day, thirty years afterward." (Zayas Enriquez, "Porfirio 
Diaz," p. 148.) 

Thus did the Machine establish its bloody peace; for the 
armed revolt of the people in defence of their democratic 
institutions, the threat of United States intervention; for the 
peaceful political organization of the people for the same end, 
wholesale murder. 

In spite of the seizure of the communal lands at Juchitan, 
and numerous instances of individual dispossessions, the great 
mass of the agrarian democracy were still in possession of their 
farms. Their hearts were filled with forebodings for the future, 
but while the menace of United States invasion persisted, they 
knew that resistance would be useless. The impetus given 
to production by the individual ownership of the land estab- 
lished under the Restoration still continued, and agricultural 
prosperity abounded. Under the heavy taxation, however, 
the people profited little by their efforts. As in the days before 
the Ayutla Revolution, all their wealth above bare sustenance 
went to pay for the upkeep of a huge standing army, and to fill 
the pockets of the swarms of politicians and speculators who 
battened on the national treasury. 



S04 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

One of the outstanding characteristics of the new regime, a 
characteristic that has lasted to the present day, was the com- 
plete license allowed to government employees in the manipula- 
tion of the public money. From the day that Diaz came into 
power as the representative of American interests in 1876, to the 
day he fled to Paris in 1910, organized corruption reigned 
unchecked in the affairs of the administration, and not a single 
case of embezzlement, malfeasance, graft or misappropriation, 
in connection with the handling of the public funds, has ever 
been prosecuted in the courts. In this way a widely extended 
and infinitely ramifying collusion of interests was established 
between the official class and the speculators, merchants, manu- 
facturers, and land-owners. Despotism feeds upon corruption. 
This system which found its master exponents in the Scien- 
tificos of recent years was no accident. It was a deliberate com- 
munity of crime reaching insidiously to the most remote and 
unsuspected quarters, which battened as it grew and grew as it 
battened. In its ultimate form it became a vast, and, in a finan- 
cial sense, world-wide conspiracy for the support of the Diaz 
faction in Mexico and the most thorough exploitation of the 
Mexican people. 

With the expiration of Diaz's first term of office. Congress 
prepared to play the farce of amending the constitution accord- 
ing to the Plan de Tuxtepec. It will be remembered that the 
main principle of this plan — the standard of the Diaz cuartel- 
azo — was the non-reelection of the President and the governors 
of the states! Congress undoubtedly hoped that this pretence 
of political concession would mend its somewhat dilapidated 
prestige with the people and smooth the path of future fraud 
and exploitation. 

Thus the task of appointing a successor was left to Diaz. 
He had proved so faithful to the interests who had placed him 
in power, so prompt to aid the land speculators, so energetic in 
nipping political opposition in the bud, that he was already re- 
garded by his home and foreign supporters as an ideal chief ex- 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 305 

ecutive for their purposes. A large number of them indeed were 
anxious to set aside the non-reelection principle and retain 
him in power. Astuter counsels prevailed, however. After 
consultation with his political instructors and the representa- 
tives of the foreign interests, Diaz named Gen. Manuel 
Gonzalez as his successor. It was an excellent choice in view of 
the circumstances. "Then Diaz thought of Gen. Manuel 
Gonzalez" says Enriquez. . . .'* Gonzalez was a rough man 
without education, without training of any kind, much less 
administrative knowledge. As a commander of guerillas he 
was brave to rashness. He had served in the ranks of the reac- 
tionaries, and afterward had gone over to the Republicans at 
the time of the war against the French. . . . And in addition 
he was one of General Diaz's most fanatical partisans." (Raf- 
ael Zayas Enriquez, "Porfirio Diaz," p. 151.) 

This "rough man without education" was naturally no very 
acceptable candidate to the people, trained as they were in the 
traditions of Juarez and Tejada; consequently it was necessary 
to employ the same methods for his election as were used in 
placing Diaz in power. An election was held at the point of 
the bayonet, and in due time the new creature of the speculators 
and foreign interests was proclaimed President of Mexico. 

It would be difficult to describe, with any approximation 
to the truth, the degradation and corruption of the new adminis- 
tration. That it comprised only a small number of criminals, 
representing the interests of the foreign speculators, and a com- 
paratively small section of the Mexican nation, is a consoling 
fact; for if we were to judge the Mexican nation as a whole 
by the actions of this administration we should be compelled 
to admit that it had no further right to existence. A kind of 
frenzy of debauchery and an unbridled plundering of the na- 
tional exchequer were the chief characteristics of the Gonzales 
regime. The national palace of Mexico City made sacred as a 
family hearth by the virtuous Guerrero, reverenced even by the 
military dictators in the daj^s of the Church power, and sane- 



306 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

tified by Juarez in the holiness of his family life, was converted 
by Gonzales and his politicians into a vast brothel, the scene 
of hideous orgies and the wholesale defamation of womanhood. 
Not content with such victims as Mexico offered — the demi- 
mondaines, professional prostitutes, and the ravished wives 
and daughters of the poor — these men even imported numbers 
of beautiful Circassian girls to stimulate their jaded lust. To 
maintain the Saturnalia the national treasury was robbed with- 
out stint or shame. ''Manuel Gonzales carried out his agreement 
faithfully,*' says Doctor Pardo. "Very few governments, even 
those of Turkey and Hindoostan, and of the Spanish-American 
caciques, have ever offered a worse instance of prostitution and 
of administrative corruption. The ransacking of the public 
treasury was never more complete and bold; all the ordinary 
and extraordinary revenues went to swell the vaults of Gon- 
zales and his favourites : new taxations were created .... 
only the army was well paid, for otherwise they knew revolt 
would result. . . . That Gonzales carried on all these cynical 
plunderings in accord with the agreement made with Don Porfirio 
there is no doubt. He knew that he was to enjoy complete im- 
munity, because General Diaz himself was the instigator and har- 
bourer of all these crimes.*' (Dr. Lara Pardo, "De Porfirio 
Diaz a Francisco Madero," p. 38.) 

Diaz in spite of his strict limitations was not without a cer- 
tain shrewdness. He recognized clearly that "all things are 
lawful but all things are not expedient"; and since it was 
highly necessary that the predatory elements which had placed 
him in power should be not only appeased but glutted, he pre- 
ferred that some one other than himself should bear the odium 
of the affair. This explains his sudden compunction in the 
matter of reelection, and his adroit choice of Gonzales for the 
presidency. The treasury sacked, his supporters glutted, and 
the patience of the more respectable element exhausted, he 
foresaw his urgent recall to power as the saviour of society, 
the "Puritan Maker of Mexico." This was the "agreement" 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 307 

of which Dr. Lara Pardo speaks: Gonzales was to reward the 
Porfiristas, and reward them royally, and Diaz was to return to 
oflSce in the splendour of a national saint. 

During this regime the national railroad from Mexico City to 
Vera Cruz — that cherished project of Juarez and Tejada and 
the agrarian democracy — was sold for a song to the English 
contractors who had built it, and the proceeds went to pay for 
new orgies and bacchanals in the national palace. Meanwhile 
the American railroad speculators, taking advantage of the 
concessions granted them by Diaz, had already begun to build 
the railroads between Laredo and Mexico City, and El Paso 
and Mexico City. 

As we have said, these roads received a construction subsidy 
of eight thousand dollars per kilometre on level ground, and 
twenty thousand dollars per kilometre in rough country. (A 
kilometre is 0.62137 of a mile, or 3,280 feet 10 inches.) They 
were built of the cheapest material, by forced labour, and in a 
highly circuitous fashion in order to increase the total mileage, 
and thus the total subsidy. At a later time, when these roads 
were really required for business purposes, it was found neces- 
sary to shorten them by half, and rebuild them from end to end. 

Finally the corruption of the Gonzales administration reached 
its logical climax in two gigantic peculations : one, the debase- 
ment of the national coinage, the other, the inflation of the Eng- 
lish credits. With the approval and authorization of Congress, 
debased nickel pieces of one, ^ve, and ten cent denominations 
were coined and forced into circulation to the face valuation of 
twenty million dollars. The actual value of these coins in rela- 
tion to their face value may be estimated from the fact that 
they were bought ready made from German manufacturers at a 
price equal to 15 per cent, of their face value laid down in Mex- 
ico City! The lower ranks of the government employees, in- 
cluding great numbers of workingmen, were forced, under 
threat of discharge and imprisonment, to accept their pay 
entirely in this spurious coinage. 



308 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The second operation — the inflation of the English credits — 
came near to precipitating a revolution. It will be remembered 
that Guadalupe Victoria, the first republican President of 
Mexico, contracted a government loan with English bankers for 
$30,000,000, of which only the sum of $20,000,000 was actually 
subscribed. The 5 per cent, interest on this loan had been paid 
more or less regularly during the Clerical regime; but thanks to 
the collusion of the Church with the English creditors repre- 
sented by Messrs. J. de Lazardi & Co., this original amount of 
twenty million dollars had increased by stealthy increments to the 
enormous figure of sixty-nine million dollars. The $49,000,000 
which represented the inflation had been secured by the Eng' 
Ush bankers at the comparatively trifling expenditure of a few 
million dollars in judicious bribes distributed amongst the vari- 
ous ministers and presidents of the Clerical regime. None of 
it ever reached the national treasury. It was the suspension of 
interest on this inflated credit, it will be remembered, which 
formed England's pretext for joining with France and Spain 
in the intervention of 1861. Juarez in his endeavour to avoid 
armed invasion had prudently recognized the debt. Subse- 
quently, however, in reproof of the English Government's 
breach of neutrality in recognizing Maximilian, he refused to 
recognize its standing as the representative of the English cred- 
itors, consenting only to treat with these creditors as individuals, 
and forcing these creditors to reduce their claims. In the cor- 
ruption of the Gonzales administration the English creditors 
now divined an excellent opportunity for further peculation; 
and in complicity with the President and his coterie of specula- 
tors and politicians they reintroduced this claim for recognition 
by Congress, reinflated from sixty-nine million dollars to a hun- 
dred million dollars. As in the days of Iturbide, some five or six 
representatives of the people had managed to effect an entrance 
into Congress despite the vigilance of the election officials and the 
soldiery. These men, refusing to be bribed, fought the recogni- 
tion of this inflated credit with such vigour that the government 






REBEL SCOUTS 

'Badly armed, poorly organized as they were, these impetuous hosts utterly 

out -manoeuvred and overwhelmed the 40,000 well-drilled Federal 

troops sent against them" (See page 345) 




Photograph by Paul Thompson, N. 
THE PEOPLE AND WAR NEWS 

"Viva la tierra! Viva la Constitucion! . . . They would no longer fight 
for a man. Henceforth they would never lay down their arms till they themselves 
had consummated the economic reorganization they demanded" (See page 349) 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 309 

in alarm postponed debate upon it to a more convenient oc- 
casion. 

While Gonzales as President was plundering the treasury and 
holding high bacchanal in the national palace, Porfirio Diaz, 
as Secretary of the Fomento department — the department of 
lands, mines, and industries — was quietly building up an im- 
mense political and publicity machine by the lavish distribution 
of land and industrial concessions to the numerous corporations, 
Mexican, American, and EngHsh, formed by his supporters and 
friends. 

Herein, indeed, may be found the genesis of that monstrous 
"Diaz-Myth" which has held the world in the grip of a lie for 
thirty-four years. These concession-seeking corporations, in 
some instances, were joint stock concerns, composed of the most 
influential men in the financial and political world; in other 
instances they were limited liability companies comprising many 
thousands of shareholders in all walks of life. When we con- 
sider that many of these shareholders were professional people, 
lawyers, politicians, writers, preachers, editors, not only Mex- 
ican but American, English, French, and Spanish; when we 
consider that this policy of free-hand concessions not only in 
land but in railroads, industries, mines, and timber, begun by 
Diaz in 1876, was pursued by him until his flight to Paris in 
1910, and that with each passing year thousands of new investors 
in all parts of the world have become interested in these conces- 
sions, we shall be able to understand a little more clearly the 
real nature of that vast world-conspiracy which has defamed and 
exploited the common people of Mexico for thirty-four years, 
and exalted the man who was responsible for the massacres 
of Juchitan, of Vera Cruz, of Papantla, of Tomochic, of Can- 
nanea, to the position of an international hero. 

It was a matter of dividends. Every investor who held stock 
in one of these innumerable enterprises worshipped as a god 
the man who made his dividends possible, no matter how. 
The great majority of the foreign investors in Mexico were, and 



310 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

are, Americans, hence the repeated threat of United States inter- 
vention in Mexico used by Diaz throughout his career as a 
bludgeon wherewith to beat the people into dumb submission 
while the last dividend was being ground from their quivering 
flesh. 

Nor was Diaz blind to the possibilities of private gain in 
these transactions. From all concession-seeking corporations 
he invariably extorted 20 per cent, of the total stock as a re- 
ward for his services, a practice that, thriftily conducted, 
enabled him, it is charged, after thirty-four years of regal expen- 
diture, to leave Mexico in 1910 with sixty million dollars in 
cash. 

In regard to these land concessions it will be remembered that 
when the Constitution of 1857, in enunciating the principle 
that the sole title to personal ownership in the land rests in the 
personal cultivation of the land, confiscated at a blow the vast 
illicit holdings of the Church, and restored them to the use of 
the people, the peons, unused to legalities, failed to perfect their 
titles, justly enough regarding the constitution itself as the chief 
warranty of their continued possession of the land in general 
and the municipal tax records as sufficient evidence of their 
ownership in particular. This fine faith of the people now 
formed the pretext for their wholesale evictions from their 
holdings. The terms of the land concessions granted by Diaz 
throughout his administrative career permitted the individual 
or corporate concessionaire to denounce and appropriate all 
the unrecorded land within the confines of a given area. 

Thus was begun the crudest campaign of land-dispossession 
in history. The peon, now an independent farmer, challenged 
for his perfected title by the agents of the land companies, was 
unable to produce it. In vain he pointed to the constitution; 
in vain he pointed to the evidence of his proprietorship con- 
tained in the municipal tax records. Land was rising in value; 
the introduction of the railroads and the inrush of capital had 
excited the greed of the despoilers to the extreme. The peon 



PORFIRIO DIAZ 311 

was evicted summarily and without even the formality of inves- 
tigation, and the eviction was backed by all the force of the 
government and army. When the peon, with that reverence 
for law which is his outstanding characteristic, sought the 
protection of the courts he found himself ruled out without a 
hearing, or if heard, informed that he had no case. If finally 
in despair he resorted to arms he was threatened with the viola- 
tion of his beloved fatherland at the hands of the dreaded United 
States, and if still obdurate he was massacred by the govern- 
ment troops. 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE DICTATORSHIP 

AT THE close of Gonzales' term of office the political agents 
of the foreign speculators, backed by the entire Mexican reac- 
tionary party, experienced no difficulty in setting aside the 
recently paraded principle of non-reelection and in again 
placing Porfirio Diaz in power as President of the Republic. 
In this they were aided by the general reaction of honest so- 
ciety against the vileness of the Gonzales regime, and, of course, 
by the usual carefully prepared and executed "bayonet-election." 

On the 1st of December, 1884, Porfirio Diaz returned to 
power nominally as President of Mexico, in reality as dictator, 
or, in other words, as the Janissary of American *'Big Business." 
From this time until his flight to Paris in 1910, some twenty- 
six years later, he was maintained in office continually and 
without reelection by the powers which placed him there. 
During this period Mexico underwent a most complete change 
economically and politically ; the agrarian democracy gave way 
to a feudal and capitalist autocracy, and the constitutional 
government to a government which no longer depended for its 
sovereignty on the will of the people, but solely upon the army, 
the popular terror of United States invasion, and the moral 
support of the ever-increasing host of foreign and domestic 
investors in Mexican enterprises. This period, therefore, pre- 
sents a continuous logical development of those forces of inter- 
national capitalism which overthrew the Restoration and placed 
Diaz in power. Consequently it may be dealt with in its en- 
tirety as a well-marked historical epoch under the following 
three subdivisions : 



THE DICTATORSHIP 313 

I. The inflation of the foreign credits and their consolidation 
into the Mexican national debt. 

II. The eviction of the people from their lands, and conse- 
quently the total destruction of the agrarian democracy, the 
reestablishment of peonage, and the introduction of the most 
abject industrial wage slavery. 

III. The establishment of a railroad and industrial policy 
based upon the wholesale sequestration of the national resources. 

We shall proceed to deal with these in their order: 

I. The inflation of the foreign credits and their consolidation 
into the Mexican national debt 

On the 22nd of June, 1885, Congress, sitting behind closed 
doors, unanimously passed a bill inflating the already grossly 
inflated foreign credits from $81,632,657.81 to $191,385,781.59, 
and consolidating them into a Mexican national debt. A brief 
review of the genesis and history of these claims will reveal 
the real enormity of this fraud perpetrated not only upon the 
Mexican people of that day but upon generations yet unborn. 

In 1862, it will be remembered, the foreign credits against 
Mexico stood as follows : 



English claims $69,311,657.81 

Spanish " 9,460,986.29 

French " 2,859,917.10 



Total $81,632,561.10 

With the history of the English credit we dealt in the pre- 
vious chapter; its real amount was twenty million dollars. The 
Spanish debt, it will be remembered, began with Lucas Alaman's 
criminal recognition: (1) of the Spanish claim to reimburse- 
ment for the moneys expended in the Spanish campaign against 
the insurgents in the War of Independence; (2) of the fraudu- 
lent claims of Father Moran in regard to the confiscated estates 
for the support of the missions of the Holy Rosary in the Philip- 



314 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

pines. Both of these claims, it will be remembered, were repu- 
diated by Juarez with the sanction of the Spanish Minister, Don 
Miguel de los Santos Alvarez. The French claims arose out of 
some trifling damages incurred by French citizens and property 
during the turbulent days of the Clerical military despotism. 
Juarez agreed to recognize these to the amount of $200,000, but, 
of course, repudiated them consequent upon the French inva- 
sion of Mexico. Since the Ayutla Revolution the constitu- 
tional government had endeavoured to reduce the English credit 
to its original proportions, and had entirely repudiated the 
Spanish and French credits as without foundation. Thus at 
the Restoration Mexico's exact legal indebtedness to Europe 
was only $20,000,000 due on the English credit, plus some ar- 
rears of interest. The coterie of politicians and speculators 
who formed the Diaz government, having optioned enormous 
quantities of this discredited foreign paper at ridiculously low 
figures, proceeded to reintroduce not only the English but the 
Spanish and French claims for full recognition by Congress, 
reinflating them in the process from $81,632,561 to approx- 
imately $144,953,785, plus arrears of interest to the amount of 
$46,431,996, totalling $191,385,781. Of this amount $20,000,- 
000 was legal indebtedness; $69,000,000 represented the result 
of previous peculations, and $110,000,000 represented the exact 
plunder of the speculators involved in the present transaction. 
This colossal fraud was the foundation of many of those vast 
fortunes so characteristic of modern Mexico, including those of 
President Diaz and his family. Nor did the peculations of the 
government cease here. The same Congress which authorized 
the recognition of this spurious paper trebled its value by 
enacting a measure which gave the bondholders of the new Mexican 
consolidated debt the privilege of exchanging their bonds for gov- 
ernment (?) land at an exchange rate of 35 :100. When we consider 
that the owners of these bonds were members of the govern- 
ment, or friends and supporters of the goverment, we shall 
understand why this provision was made, and also why the best 



THE DICTATORSHIP 815 

irrigated lands in Mexico were sold by that government at 
about 7 cents a hectare — i. e., about 3 cents an acre. Thus the 
speculator-politician who had acquired $35,000 worth of gov- 
ernment bonds as his share of the spoils, and at no greater cost 
than was involved in helping to secure the necessary legislation, 
could now exchange this $35,000 worth of bonds for one hun- 
dred thousand dollars* worth of irrigated lands, at the rate of 
3 cents an acre; in other words, emerge from his strenuous labours 
in support of the government with approximately 3,267,000 acres 
of magnificent land to his credit. Thus was instituted the 
greatest land robbery recorded in history. During the Diaz 
rSgime no less than 72,000,000 hectares — i. e., 180,000,000 ojcres, 
(a hectare is about 2| acres) — of the best lands in Mexico were 
acquired by land corporations and the personal friends of the 
administration, at a total government valuation of $5,000,000 
(7 cents per hectare, or 3 cents an acre), and at an actual 'payment 
of only $1,750,000 in government bonds. The climax of this 
procedure was reached when these bond-holding land-specula- 
tors proceeded, with the vigorous assistance of Diaz, to evict 
a million independent farmers from their holdings, under the 
pretext that they were trespassing upon these already pur- 
chased government lands. 

This plunder of an entire people and their posterity, this se- 
questration of an entire country, was the piece de resistance of 
the banquet presided over by Diaz, but it was by no means the 
whole banquet. There were innumerable side-dishes for all 
those who possessed the necessary qualifications for a seat at 
the board. 

In speaking of this period Dr. Lara Pardo says: "The Cler- 
icals — for long years excluded from the bureaucratic feasting 
— now received lucrative positions, fat commissions, splendid 
prebends; generals who fought at the side of the French against 
the national sovereignty were also welcome; he who had no 
place in the budget, nor in the secret expenditures of the 
State Department, got concessions, contracts, valuable land 



316 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

grants, similar to those of the old "Mercedes " given by the Em- 
peror Carlos V and his descendants. . . . In the midst of 
this tide of generosity and liberality heads were cut off; these 
were the heads of the uncompromising or unsubmissive per- 
sonal enemies, the obdurate rebels who were yet dreaming of 
disputing the supreme power of General Diaz. Murderous 
daggers, stray bullets, arrests, carried on with all the legal 
apparatus and ending in vile murder committed on the way to 
prison, were clearing the camp and exterminating the legitimate 
or the bastard opposition. This latter procedure became so 
common that it was baptized under the name of ley fuga.'' 
(Dr. Lara Pardo, "De Porfirio Diaz a Francisco Madero," 
p. 42.) 

As Dr. Pardo indicates, the clergy had a prominent position 
at the banquet. Diaz and his partisans needed the moral sup- 
port of the Church fully as badly as Santa Ana or Bustamante, 
and they were prepared to obtain it by the readiest means to 
hand. Indeed, never had the Church prospered as it had pros- 
pered under Diaz. Not only were the clergy given a promi- 
nent share in the Mexican national debt operations, and thus 
enabled again to possess themselves of vast land holdings, but 
immense concessions of the richest lands in Mexico were given 
them from time to time in such quantities, indeed, that the 
Church in Mexico owns more land to-day than at any time 
since the Conquest. Thus did the astute speculators and pol- 
iticians who made Diaz their figurehead interest the whole 
power of the Catholic world in the support of their regime. 

II. The eviction of the people from their lands, and, conse- 
quently , the destruction of the agrarian democracy, the reestahlish- 
ment of peonage, and the introduction of the most abject wage 
slavery. 

Since the success of the Diaz cuartelazo, in 1877, the specula- 
tors and politicians of the new regime had not lost sight for one 
moment of their ultimate object — the possession of all the 



THE DICTATORSHIP 317 

valuable lands in Mexico. But it was not until 1885 that they 
were in a position to begin a definite and well-supported cam- 
paign of expropriation. By that time the masterly manipula- 
tion of the Mexican national debt had placed in their hands, as 
we have said, millions of dollars' worth of government bonds, 
exchangeable for land at the rate of thirty-five dollars in bonds 
for a hundred dollars in land; the Department of Agriculture 
had unblushingly fixed the price of the irrigated lands at 3 
cents an acre, and the arable lands at from 1 to 2 cents an acre, 
and all pasture lands at 1 to J cent an acre; and finally Presi- 
dent Diaz had built up a powerful engine for the suppression of 
revolt and the castigation of recalcitrants by the efficient or- 
ganization of the army, and by the creation of a special body 
of fifteen thousand mounted police (rurales). These latter 
indeed played a highly important part in the land-evictions. 
Recruited from the lowest class of criminals, splendidly mounted, 
trained, and equipped, and wholly destitute of humanity, they 
were regarded by Diaz and his admirers as the chief guarantee 
of "peace." Conditions, therefore, were now highly favourable 
for a systematic attack upon the agrarian democracy. 

Accordingly, in the winter of this* year, 1885, the campaign 
was opened in the valley of Papantla in the State of Vera Cruz. 
This valley is one of the richest in Mexico, yielding abundant 
crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar-cane, pineapples, and many other 
tropical or sub-tropical products. At this time it supported 
an agrarian population of over twenty thousand honest and 
industrious working folk in the full enjoyment of prosperity 
and peace. So rich a prize as this was naturally the first to 
fall into the hands of the speculators. 

One day a party of surveyors appeared in the valley with their 
transits. The people knew only too well the meaning of this 
invasion, and, filled with foreboding, they protested to the sur- 
veyors that they had no desire to have their lands measured 
even if the government had ordered it, for those lands were 
their own private property by the warranty of the Constitution. 



318 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The surveyors persisted and the next day reappeared with a 
posse of rurales. Again the people protested, but this time 
they were silenced by force, and in the clash that ensued several 
lives were lost on both sides. 

Four days later a force consisting of several thousand rurales 
and a division of the army entered the valley and began the 
systematic extermination of the population. How many were 
killed will never be known. About ten years ago in the course 
of our investigations we visited this valley and endeavoured to 
elicit some details of the affair from the people. Neither man, 
woman, nor child could be induced to say a word, because al- 
ready a number of them had met death, banishment, imprisonment, 
and flogging for even speaking of it. In spite of this dumbness of 
the people, however, we obtained independent proof that for fifteen 
days the slaughter never ceased, that not a man escaped alive, that 
only a remnant of women and children were spared, and that the 
task of burying the dead was so great that a month later the air for 
miles around the valley was unbreathable owing to the stench of the 
thousands of putrefying corpses. To-day this whole region, where 
once twenty thousand peaceable, industrious folk obtained a pros- 
perous living from the soil, belongs to a single rich family. 

In Nuevo Leon, one of those states which by reason of its 
great agrarian strength had managed to retain a certain inde- 
pendence, the local government endeavoured to protect the 
people in the possession of their lands. The speculators, how- 
ever, were not to be balked of their prey. Accordingly Diaz, 
at their behest, dispatched an overwhelming force into the 
state, overthrew the authorities and again accomplished the 
wholesale eviction of the people from their lands. 

The natives of Nuevo Leon, however — some of the best 
fighting stock in Mexico — violently resisted the government 
troops, and Diaz in order to quell them was compelled to resort 
once more to the threat of inviting United States intervention. 
The ruse was entirely successful. Washington dispatched troops 
to the border, and the people abandoned the fight, choosing to submit 



THE DICTATORSHIP 319 

to wholesale eviction from their farms rather than incur a new viola- 
tion of the fatherland. 

We have no space more than briefly to glimpse the night of 
horror which drew down upon the defenceless people of Mexico 
as happy community upon community, independent state upon 
state, fell victims to the greed of the speculators and the ferocity 
of Porfirio Diaz. Even had we the space we have not the desire. 
The regime of Diaz — the instrument of international capitalism 
in Mexico — will be placed in its true light, and thus our duty 
as historians will be fulfilled by the brief citation of only one or 
two typical episodes of the period; and even in this we confess 
the narration entails upon us a certain brutal effort of mind 
which we should be glad to relinquish. One of these is the 
Tomochic affair. 

Following the dispossessions of Papantla and Nuevo Leon, the 
entire State of Chihuahua passed from the possession of hun- 
dreds of thousands of small farmers into the possession of two 
or three families under the leadership of one man — to-day the 
largest cattle owner in the world. The campaign of massacre 
and eviction began in the districts of Guerrero, Temosachic, 
and Tomochic, located on the lower range of the Sierra Madre 
Occidental. No worthier class of people existed on the Amer- 
ican continent than the sturdy peasant farmers and cattle 
raisers of these rich districts. Puritans in their patriarchal 
mode of life, they added to the industry, hospitality, and cour- 
tesy of their class the mountaineer's passion for freedom. 

It happened that the governor of Chihuahua, General Car- 
rillo, an old supporter of Diaz, had his attention drawn to these 
lands by a lawyer named Medrano. Their richness and extent, 
as well as the ease with which they might be acquired, excited 
the cupidity of both, and they joined in a conspiracy to obtain 
possession of them. It was necessary, of course, to find some 
pretext for evicting the farmers. Such a pretext was soon to 
hand. 

A drunken Catholic priest of Tomochic entered his pulpit 



320 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

one morning to conduct mass in an unusually intoxicated con- 
dition. His abusive language and actions naturally scandalized 
the congregation, and the elders finally were compelled to force 
him out of the church. The priest thereupon went to Guerrero 
and complained to the authorities that the villagers of Tomochic 
had conspired to murder him. Acting upon the complaint, 
the governor dispatched a posse of rurales to arrest the elders, 
but Medrano, seizing the opportunity, filed charges of murder 
against all the farmers in the district, with the purpose of detain- 
ing them in jail indefinitely and appropriating their lands. 
The people, however, alive to the plot, arrested the rurales, and 
sent a message to the governor requesting the release of the 
elders and a proper examination of the facts. The governor's 
reply arrived fifteen days later when fifteen thousand soldiers, 
reinforced with a park of artillery, marched into Tomochic 
and began a massacre which lasted ten days and nights without 
ceasing. 

The farmers were mountain men, hardy and capable; their 
women were like them. They refused to be slaughtered like 
sheep and sprang to arms, contesting every inch of the ground 
with the soldiery. Husband and wife, son and daughter fought 
side by side. On the tenth day every able-bodied man and 
woman over twelve years of age had perished, and only a handful 
of some two hundred old women and children remained huddled 
together in the church. Then the soldiers, urged on by their 
officers, surrounded the church with a ring of bayonets, poured 
oil on its doors, set fire to it, and burned it to the ground, cre- 
mating alive the throng of women and children imprisoned 
within.* The soldiery then ravaged the neighbouring towns 
of Temosachic, San Andres, and Guerrero, repeating the massa- 
cre of Tomochic again and again until the whole region was 
depopulated. 

*That Diaz was directly responsible for this massacre is shown by the fact 
that when Heriberto Frias, an army lieutenant who witnessed this massacre, 
gave an exact account of it in a book called "Tomochic," he was compelled to 
flee Mexico for his life. 



THE DICTATORSHIP 321 

It will be remembered that during the war of intervention 
Juarez had made a practice of issuing decrees confiscating the 
immense land holdings of the imperialists and dividing them 
among the people. Beginning with the year 1885 a number of 
state legislatures, notably that of Durango, packed with the 
creatures of Diaz, proceeded to set aside these decrees as a pre- 
liminary step to the eviction of the farmers from their land. 
In every case wholesale despoliation followed. Shorn of their 
legal titles, harassed by rurales, threatened with United States 
intervention, the people yielded up their lands and sank into 
peonage, or, resisting, perished in entire communities. 

In the State of Sonora the Yaqui Indians, a tribe of thirty 
thousand, had practised for centuries a system of land tenure 
common to all peoples in the stage of primitive communism. 
Under this system the land belongs to the community as a whole; 
one part is set aside for pasture; another for agriculture. The 
pasture is common to all, with certain restrictions as to the 
number of head of cattle permitted to any one individual; the 
agricultural lands are subdivided and distributed into allot- 
ments to each family. Every three years these allotments are 
redistributed, thus giving the due proportion of poor and rich 
soil to all. Brave, hardy, and industrious, and occupying a loca- 
tion offering excellent facilities for defence, the Yaquis from the 
remotest times had resisted every effort at subjugation, and 
had retained intact their independence and the integrity of 
their land system. 

Owing to the general advances of society since the Ayutla 
Revolution, and the resulting improved methods of agriculture, 
this old system of redistribution of the land had dropped into 
desuetude among them, and by the year 1880 they had already 
adopted the system of private ownership in agricultural land, 
although the traditions of communism still swayed their actions 
as a collectivity. The Yaqui Valley is phenomenally rich, and 
the Yaquis themselves are the hardest working people in Mexico, 
two circumstances which excited the cupidity of the land spec- 



322 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

lators to the utmost. For if rich land is a valuable loot, not less 
so is the labour of an exceptionally hard-working peon. Accord- 
ingly, hardly had Diaz come into power before the land specula- 
tors invoked the combined action of the state and federal 
governments in an attack upon this territory. 

One day, in 1880, Ramon Corral, the governor of the state, 
dispatched a posse of some twenty -five mescal-inflamed rurales 
into the Yaqui Valley to raid one of the villages while the men 
were absent in the fields. When the men returned home in the 
evening and learned that their homes had been despoiled and 
their women dishonoured, they went in a body to Guaymas to 
complain to the authorities, and, receiving no redress, proceeded 
to Hermosillo, the capital of the state, to lay their case before the 
governor. Unable to obtain aught but insult and threat from 
the authorities, they returned to their villages with vengeance 
in their hearts, and when the raids were repeated they flew to 
arms. This, of course, was exactly what the land speculators 
desired, and troops were immediately rushed into the valley to 
suppress the revolt and carry out the wholesale eviction of the 
farmers from their lands. 

The task, however, proved morediflficult than had been antici- 
pated. The Yaquis are a strong race, high-hearted and of 
great endurance. In the Revolution of Independence, in the 
war with the United States, in the three years' struggle for the 
upholding of the constitution, and in the subsequent conflict 
with the French invader they had proved their patriotism and 
valour. To this day they venerate the names of Juarez and 
Lerdo de Tejada, and regard themselves as a part of the Mex- 
ican nation, sharing the responsibilities and rights of Mexican 
citizens. Consequently, when the government troops arrived 
they found themselves confronted not by a handful of terrified 
villagers but by an entire population, well armed, accustomed 
to fighting, and determined to resist eviction from their lands to 
the last man. 

From that moment began a genuine war between the Yaqui 



THE DICTATORSHIP 823 

race and the Mexican Government which lasted for thirty 
years. Of course the government with its well-trained cavalry 
and modern artillery could have annihilated every Yaqui in 
Sonora at any time during the campaign. That it refrained from 
doing so was not due to any policy of mercy on its part, but to 
the fact that the land speculators needed peons. To extermi- 
nate the population was, in this instance, to destroy an invalu- 
able labour supply. There was another cause, moreover, which 
saved the Yaquis from complete extermination. Ramon Cor- 
ral, the governor of Sonora, and lately Vice-President of Mexico, 
found the maintenance of the campaign a highly profitable 
affair, for it provided him with good excuse for levying an enor- 
mous war tax for the upkeep of an army of ostensibly fifteen 
thousand soldiers. Eight thousand of these, however, existed only 
on paper, and their unclaimed pay and expenses provided a 
handsome perquisite for himself and his military commanders. 
In the course of this daily warfare the Yaquis were driven 
gradually from their lands into the mountains, or were forced 
into peonage. 

In recent years President Diaz, in conjunction with his 
nephew, Felix Diaz, and Ramon Corral, the governor of So- 
nora, conducted a lucrative business in Yaqui slaves.* Their 
method was to round them up with posses of cavalry, ship 
them like cattle — men, women, and children — to Yucatan and 
there sell them at a price averaging sixty-five dollars apiece 
to the hennequin planters, admittedly the most brutal class of 
men in the world. Divorced from their native clime, separated 
from their loved ones, subjected to unnamable cruelties, the 
Yaquis died like flies; so fast, indeed, that the planters calcu- 
lated upon buying a fresh supply every six months. Among 
the men, those who siu'vived the unhealthy climate and incred- 
ible toil succumbed to the rawhide lash; among the women, 
those who survived the lust of the planters, and the toil of the 



*A full and accurate account of this matter will be found in John Kenneth 
Turner's *' Barbarous Mexico/' American Magazitie, and Kerr & Co., Chicago. 



324 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

plantation, were thrown to sate the Chinamen. Thus by 1910 
no more than a handful of the noble Yaqui race remained, pos- 
sibly some five or six thousand, certainly not more. 

These episodes are sufficient to illustrate the nature and 
method of the Diaz policy in regard to the agrarian democracy. 
Were one to make a complete compilation of all such episodes 
during the years 1877 to 1910, it would fill many volumes 
and constitute the bloodiest record since the Roman ruling 
class overthrew the slave revolts of Spartacus and decorated 
the Appian Way with living torches. Let it be sufficient for 
our purpose to summarize the outcome of this policy as evi- 
denced in Mexico to-day. 

As the result of these vast land despoliations the valley of 
Papantla, which once supported a population of twenty thou- 
sand independent farmers, to-day belongs to one rich family. 
The entire State of Chihuahua belongs to three families, headed 
by a man who is reputed the largest single cattle-owner in the 
/ world. In the State of Morelos, from which in recent times 
have sprung the gallant Zapata and his followers, four men, one 
of them the son-in-law of Diaz, own every inch of agricultural 
land, and two hundred thousand evicted farmers — now land- 
less peons — till the soil for them at an average wage of l^J 
cents a day. The entire Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the 
Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, formerly appropriated by 
Manuel Romero Rubio, Diaz's father-in-law, now belongs to a 
small group of interests known as the Pearson syndicate, com- 
prising Diaz's wife, three of her sisters, Jose Yves Limantour, 
treasurer of the late Diaz government, and Lord Cowdray, 
formerly known as Mr. Wheetman D. Pearson. 

To obtain undisputed possession of this immense region, 
fabulously rich in oil, as well as in first-class agricultural lands, 
a campaign of extermination was carried on, in the course of 
which whole towns, notably the town of Acayucan, and innu- 
merable villages were completely wiped off the map. Similarly 
in the State of Puebla the governor, General Mucio Martinez, 



THE DICTATORSHIP 325 

in complicity with a group of land speculators and by the mil- 
itary assistance of Diaz, seized the entire agricultural land of the 
state, evicting several hundred thousand small farmers and anni- 
hilating whole towns and groups of villages in the process. 
By the same methods of wholesale eviction and slaughter, a 
single large land corporation has become possessed of all the 
agricultural lands of Sinaloa. In every state in Mexico the 
record is the same. By the year 1892 all the great bodies of 
agricultural land had passed from the possession of more than | 
a million small farmers into the hands of less than fifty rich ^ 
families and corporations of the Diaz clique. 

In spite of these vast despoliations there yet remained,*' 
dotted here and there throughout the land, considerable num- 
bers of scattered individual holdings which had escaped the 
eye of the speculator. To obtain possession of these as quickly 
as possible and with the least expenditure of effort, the Treasury 
Department on the 18th of November, 1892, issued a declara- 
tion to the effect that all owners of land formerly belonging to 
the Church might clear their titles and substantiate their pro- 
prietorship by registering their property and by paying a 
small sum into the national treasury. 

The ruse worked perfectly. Terrified by the wholesale 
evictions they had witnessed on all sides, the remnants of the 
small land-owners hastened to register their property and pay 
the required fee. The government, having acquired a hand- 
some sum in cash, turned over the records thus obtained to 
the speculators, and in the course of a few months the last 
of the deluded land-owners had been evicted either by 
some judicial trickery, or more commonly by simple force of 
arms. 

By these methods of despoliation the agrarian democracy of 
Mexico was reduced to the lowest slavery. More than a mil- 
lion families, averaging at least five members to the family, 
and consequently at least a million small traders, craftsmen 
dependent upon the custom of these families, a total sum of six 



S26 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

million working people, at least, were torn from independent 
modes of livelihood to become the peons of no more than fifty 
big land-owning families and corporations. 

Many of these evicted farmers were possessed of so strong a 
passion for freedom and independent ownership of the land 
that they went out upon the great areas of undeveloped water- 
less land coveted by none, and with infinite labour wrought 
farms anew out of the desert. With nothing but hand-tools 
they dug wells, irrigated their homesteads, ploughed, harrowed, 
seeded them, and prepared to enjoy the fruits of their toil. 
Even here the pitiless eye of the despoiler was upon them. 
Some petty government official's cupidity would be aroused by 
the flourishing little farm; some day the rurales would appear 
— and once more the despoiled family would be turned out upon 
the desert to starve or sink into peonage. "Unhappy was the 
farmer," says Dr. Lara Pardo, "who, loving the soil inherited 
from his forefathers, and suddenly inspired by a spark of mod- 
ernism, irrigated his heirloom, and by the use of machinery and 
scientific fertilizers, and by hard and patient effort, succeeded in 
producing unusual crops and thus attracted the attention of the 
neighbourhood! From that moment he had awakened the 
rapacity of the jefe politico, or of the military commander, or of 
the secretary of the governor, or of the curate, or the canon, or 
archbishop, and they would not rest until they had despoiled 
him of his property. And if he defended it with the wonderful 
tenacity with which the native defends his land he would be 
jsent to the barrack, to the ignominious servitude of the pris- 
oner-soldier, or the soldiers would take him from the jail and 
shoot him in the back on the highway. ... In the court 
archives of Mexico there are thousands and thousands of in- 
stances of this kind; I have seen many; I know in detail histo- 
ries of this kind that would fill scores of books — histories of 
people snatched from their farms by force with the help of the 
troops, in order that the governor, the military commander, or 
the foreigner, patronized and sustained by General Diaz, might 



THE DICTATORSHIP S27 

take possession of their lands.'* (Dr. Lara Pardo, "De Por- 
firio Diaz a Francisco Madero," p. 89.) 

The Church, as we have said, took a prominent share in this 
land despoliation as a reward for her moral support of Diaz. 
By the simple ruse of placing the titles of the vast estates thus 
acquired in the personal names of the various bishops and arch- 
bishops, the constitution was set at naught, and the Church 
quickly drew into her hands a vaster wealth than she had en- 
joyed since the Conquest. At the same time the destruction 
of education, and the resulting ignorance of the new generation, 
enabled her once more to tighten her psychological grip upon 
the masses. As we might be led to believe by the evidence 
revealed in the course of this work regarding the policy and 
psychology of the Roman See, this stealthy re-acquisition of 
wealth and power by the Church in Mexico was by no means 
due to the patronage of Diaz. Rather Diaz as the obedient 
tool of every phase of reaction enjoyed the patronage of the 
Church. It is rather amusing therefore to encounter the polite 
view of this matter taken by Zayas Enriquez in his worshipful 
biography of Diaz. "General Diaz," he says, "is head of the 
Freemasons in Mexico. He is of the thirty-third degree and 
Grand Commander for life. At the same time he is the invisible 
head of the Catholic Churchy its arch-protector and its director , 
influencing indirectly the appointment of bishops and archbishops, 
and the creation of new dioceses of archbishoprics.'' (Zayas En- 
riquez, "Porfirio Diaz," p. 31.) The truth is the interests of 
the Church and the interests of International Capitalism in 
Mexico exactly coincided. Diaz was the serviceable, if clumsy, 
tool of both. 

In the foregoing pages we have briefly described the manner 
in which Porfirio Diaz destroyed the agrarian democracy of 
Mexico at the behest of the land speculators and the Church, 
and degraded the people to peonage. 

We now propose to recite one or two instances illustrating 
the manner in which Porfirio Diaz degraded the industrial 



328 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

proletariat to the most abject wage slavery, and illustrating 
also the ferocity of the exploiters — even in fear of revolt. 

In the year 1907 some forty thousand men, women, and chil- 
dren, employees of the Orizaba cotton mills, went on a strike for a 
wage of 75 cents a day for men, 40 cents for women, 30 cents for 
children, and a reduction of the working day from sixteen hours 
to fourteen hours. From the moment the strike was declared 
the factory superintendent, aided by the petty officials of the 
company, resorted to provocative tactics in the hope of creating 
a disturbance, and thus providing an excuse for calling in the 
soldiery. 

Failing in this, they proceeded to cut off the strikers from the 
use of the wells, on the pretext that the water belonged to the 
company. Maddened with thirst, the people forcibly possessed 
themselves of the water they required. This was considered a 
sufficient disturbance for the purpose to hand, and the superin- 
tendent telegraphed President Diaz stating that a dangerous 
riot was in progress and requesting the aid of the government. 

Ever prompt to comply with such requests, President Diaz 
sent a division of no less than fifteen thousand troops into the 
district. Under special instructions the troops detrained at 
night outside the city and secreted themselves in the factory 
and dominant positions of the environments. 

In the morning the strikers were surprised to hear the factory 
bell ringing, and concluded that the company had decided to 
accept their terms, and was calling them back to work. Accord- 
ingly they gathered in a vast throng — men, women, and chil- 
dren — before the factory gates. Presently a petty company 
official, named Garcin, issued from the factory door and pro- 
ceeded to harangue them in the most insulting fashion, calling 
the men hungry dogs and the women bawds. The people, all 
unaware of the presence of the soldiery, and enraged by these 
insults, endeavoured to seize Garcin. The latter immediately 
fled back into the factory. 

This was the signal agreed upon. In a flash every window 



THE DICTATORSHIP 329 

of the factory belched fire. Volley after volley was poured into 
the panic-stricken mass, and the air was filled with the shrieks 
of women and children, and the groans of strong men piercing 
the continuous roar of musketry. The strikers fell in droves 
under the hail of lead, or trampled each other to death in mad- 
dened efforts to escape; while, urged on by the mill owners, the 
troops kept up an unceasing slaughter. 

How many victims were left dead or struggling in their own 
blood in the factory yards will never be known. Some idea, 
however, may be gleaned from the fact that two full freight- 
train loads of dead and wounded were rushed to Vera Cruz 
under cover of night and there dumped into the bay to be eaten 
by the sharks which swarm in those waters. The strike was 
broken and the shareholders of the cotton mills filled the col- 
umns of the subsidized press, both in the United States and 
Mexico, with encomiums upon the eflSciency of the army and 
the masterly discipline of Porfirio Diaz. 

In 1906 ten thousand miners went out on a strike at Cannanea, 
demanding five pesos ($2.50 American money) a day, and an 
eight-hour shift. At first the superintendent of the company 
agreed to give the increased wage, but refused to reduce the 
working day. This compromise would have satisfied the 
strikers, but stringent orders came from President Diaz and the 
Secretary of the Interior, Ramon Corral, forbidding the super- 
intendent to make the slightest concession to the miners, pointing 
out that to do so would be to establish a dangerous prece- 
dent and encourage industrial revolt. President Diaz backed 
up his orders by sending a strong division of troops into the 
town, and with some slight variation the massacre of Orizaba 
was repeated. Hundreds of miners were massacred in cold 
blood upon the streets, and all who were suspected of even a 
faint sympathy with the strike were sent to the horrors of a 
Mexican penitentiary. It is worthy of note that at the outbreak 
of the strike the mine owners sent frenzied appeals for help to 
the labour union officials of Arizona, declaring that the Mexican 



330 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

strikers were massacring American women and children on the 
streets of the city! The news sent a thrill of horror throughout 
the United States, and a volunteer force of three hundred Amer- 
ican workingmen immediately crossed the border and marched 
on Cannanea. The report of the massacre was, of course, a 
pure canard. But it served its purpose — and Diaz's slaughter 
of the striking miners was greeted with cheers throughout the 
United States. 

We are well aware that the policy of exterminating the more 
spirited section of the working class is not peculiar to Mexico, 
but is the policy of the capitalist class throughout the world; 
but Diaz's lust of blood was so wrought into the fabric of his 
mind that he could not conceive of the execution of the simplest 
project without the sacrifice of human life. An illuminating 
and amusing side light upon his sanguinary psychology is 
afforded by the following anecdote, quoted from Dr. Lara 
Pardo's book, "De Porfirio Diaz." For its truth we personally 
can vouch: "When the American Government brought pres- 
sure to bear upon President Diaz to stamp out the yellow fever 
then raging on the Mexican coast, protesting that it consti- 
tuted a serious menace to the American cities on the Gulf and 
Atlantic seaboards, the President summoned Dr. Felipe Gu- 
tierrez de Lara, to whom the Superior Board of Health had given 
the directions of the operations against the yellow fever on the 
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and ordered him to institute a well- 
organized campaign against the fever on the coast. "You 
are bearing with you," President Diaz told him, "full power: 
if the people resist, shoot them at once, and I assure you nobody 
will hold you responsible for your action; only let me know per- 
sonally when you are going to do that." Dr. Gutierrez de 
Lara recounted the interview to me soon after it had taken 
place. He was greatly incensed about it. Then, when the 
health campaign was carried out to a happy conclusion without 
the necessity of shooting any one, great was the surprise of 
President Diaz, and he seemed quite unable to conceive that a 



THE DICTATORSHIP 331 

good work could be performed without deluging the country in 
blood." 



No account of this wholesale enslavement of a free people 
could be either convincing or complete without some reference 
to the spiritual blinding to which they were subjected. Diaz, 
it is true, placed most reliance on brute force as a method of 
attaining the ends desired by his masters, but these methods 
would have produced a violent reaction, ending in the complete 
destruction of his power, had he not first put out the people's 
eyes by way of precaution. The eyes of the people are free, 
adequate, and untrammelled education, free assembly, free 
speech, free press, and free ballot. All of these the people 
enjoyed to the fullest extent under Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada; 
all of these Diaz destroyed within a few years of his accession 
to power. The darkness of ignorance for nine tenths of the 
Mexican nation was what he planned and accomplished. 

As a step toward creating this condition of affairs Diaz sup- 
pressed the teaching of the constitution in the schools. A little 
later he suppressed the schools themselves, except those in the 
larger cities. And as a result education became once more the 
exclusive monopoly of the wealthier classes. Juarez had estab- 
lished the teaching of the constitution in all the schools from 
the lowest to the highest, and under his regime it had been the 
common practice for the peasants to hire schoolboys to read 
its articles to them, and to repeat what they had learned about 
it in the schools. In that manner a pretty thorough knowledge 
of the constitution and all that it implied became widely dis- 
seminated among even the most illiterate. A people possessed 
of a full knowledge of its rights is no easy subject for enslave- 
ment. Diaz recognized this, and while hypocritically retaining 
the constitution on paper, even expressing a reverence for it in 
public, he utterly abrogated it in practice and destroyed the 
very knowledge of it from among the people. 

Following swiftly upon the suppression of the teaching of the 



332 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

constitution came the destruction of the free ballot, of free as- 
sembly, of free press, and free speech. The eyes of the people were 
put out. During this regime all the hideous crimes perpetrated 
by the government against individuals and against whole 
communities of the people were wrapped in the darkest secrecy. 
The victims of Papantla knew only their own wrongs; they knew 
nothing of the wrongs of Tomochic, of Sonora, of Orizaba, of 
Cannanea. Thus they writhed in their bonds, dumb, impotent, 
blind, unable to find utterance, unable to effect concerted action, 
unable to see what had befallen them. 

But the people of Mexico, though bound and shackled, never 
submitted tamely for one moment to this quenching of the light 
in their eyes. History bears no record of a more heroic or more 
useless resistance. Crimes unceasing, sinister, and bloody 
were committed by the Diaz government in its efforts to throttle 
the indignant utterances of the people; and for every martyr 
that fell a new hero sprang to take his place. Imprisonment or 
death awaited the man or woman who wrote or spoke the truth 
about the conditions obtaining in Mexico. Newspapers which 
dared to express even a mild protest against the actions of the 
government were raided, their printing plants wrecked, and 
their editors and writers were thrown into dungeons of filthy 
horror, there to rot, go blind, or mad. Radical writers 
left their homes never to return, kidnapped or stabbed to death 
in the dark. 

In the fall of 1892, in the city of Pachuca, in the State of 
Hidalgo, Simon Cravioto, the governor of the state, arrested a 
newspaper man named Santa Maria, who had dared to attack 
the iniquitous policies of the government, and burned him alive 
at the stake. Olmos y Conteras, another Liberal publicist, 
while walking on the street with his wife and children was mur- 
dered in broad daylight by policemen, acting under the instruc- 
tions of the governor of Puebla, Mucio Martinez. Scores of 
newspaper men who had gallantly protested against the whole- 
sale butchery of people were walled up in the noisome dungeons 



THE DICTATORSHIP 333 

of Belem in Mexico City, to rot in mud and excrement. That 
magnificent Intellectual, Jesus Carrion, a noted cartoonist of 
the day, and a worthy grandson of that peon hero, Pipila, who, 
with a flat stone on his back, set fire to the door of the castle 
of Granaditas in the time of Hidalgo, was one of these. When 
finally released he came forth blind, dying of pneumonia, 
and with whole portions of his body gnawed away by the rats. 
Thousands of brave men and women, the very flower of the 
nation, and the intellectual leaders of the mass, suffered un- 
speakable torture and death for endeavouring to save the light 
in the eyes of the people. Were we so minded we could fill 
hundreds of pages with these recitals. Let this be sufficient. 

Meanwhile the subsidized press maintained a ceaseless pane- 
gyric of the Dictator. Then were uttered all those encomiums 
upon the character of Porfirio Diaz which the American people, 
and indeed the whole civilized world, have since adopted as 
articles of faith. Millions of dollars was expended not only to 
create and sustain a powerful "Diaz-Myth" and to defame the 
common people, but systematically to debauch every youthful 
Mexican Intellectual of promise. 

In the University of Mexico luxurious quarters for the students 
were erected and supported by Jose Yves Limantour, the treas- 
urer of the Diaz government, where a middle-class student could 
live in comparative splendour on ten dollars a month ! Here he 
was taught to ridicule the constitution, to despise the common 
people, and here he was systematically trained to believe that 
the only path to success was to worship Diaz, to model himself 
on the supporters and politicians of the governing clique, forget 
his reason and his soul, and become an accomplished scoundrel. 

This system of poisoning the spirit of the nation at its source 
was so far successful that there is scarcely an Intellectual in 
Mexico to-day whose entire theory of life is not to be as treach- 
erous, and conscienceless, and rascally as possible. Scarcely 
one has even a superficial knowledge of the great social 
problems pressing for solution. In addition to this the subsi- 



334 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

dized press and hired publicists unceasingly represented Diaz 
to the Mexican people as the idol of foreign governments and 
nations, openly boasting that any disobedience and resistance 
to him on their part would be summarily dealt with by the 
United States army. 

Not for a moment did the Mexican people peaceably submit 
to Diaz; but in face of the tremendous odds against them their 
resistance was futile. Deep in their hearts they cherished the 
thought of another revolution — some day perhaps when Diaz 
should die. Meanwhile, in spite of their hunger, misery, slav- 
ery, and ignorance, little by little they were recouping from the 
disastrous aftermath of the French intervention, until the day 
came, in 1910, when the knowledge of their power broke upon 
them, and they burst forth in the second Ayutla, whose end is 
not yet. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
THE RAILROADS 

IF THERE is one figment of the "Diaz-Myth" more firmly 
implanted in the modern mind than another, it is that the in- 
troduction of railroads into Mexico was due to Diaz personally, 
and that this alone constitutes sufficient achievement to warrant 
his title as "Maker of Mexico." Exactly how much Diaz 
personally had to do with the introduction of the railroads and 
their development to their present status we propose to show 
by a brief examination of the facts. 

In the first place, Diaz did not introduce railroads into Mexico, 
Juarez had that honour. While Diaz was hiding in the outlaw 
dens of the south the constitutional government in pursuance 
of the principles laid down in the Constitution of 1857, and re- 
affirmed in the Leyes de Reforma, had already begun the con- 
struction of the first Mexican national railroad from Mexico 
City to Vera Cruz. And before Diaz had betrayed his father- 
land to the American railroad speculators and had been placed 
in power as their agent and factor, that railroad had been com- 
pleted. In the second place Diaz was not personally responsi- 
ble for the building of subsequent railroads. President of 
Mexico solely by the grace of the American railroad speculators, 
he had to observe his pact with them or suffer the consequences, 
i. e., in return for their moral and financial aid he was compelled 
to give them free-hand concessions to build all the roads in 
Mexico they desired, wherever and whenever they desired, 
at such terms as they desired. This lavish distribution of 
free-hand concessions as the price of support can scarcely be 



336 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

dignified with the title of a railroad policy. It was simply 
blackmail on the part of the speculators and common bribery 
on the part of Diaz. 

It is also an integral part of the "Diaz-Myth," and a current 
article of faith, that if it was the enterprise and far-sightedness 
of President Diaz which inaugurated and developed a modern 
system of railroads in Mexico, it was American capital which 
built them. This is an error as radical as the other. Not a 
dollar of American capital has been expended anywhere or at 
any time in the building of the Mexican railroads. They were 
built entirely by Mexican capital. And what is more they were 
so immensely over-subsidized that in many cases they were 
built solely for the sake of the subsidy, and in such a fashion as to 
be useless for transportation; e. g., the lines from El Paso and 
Laredo to Mexico City. It is true that these railroad stocks 
were the plaything of American speculators; that such rail- 
roads as Mexico possesses have come into a bastard existence 
as a result of the cupidity and lawlessness of American pro- 
moters and stock gamblers, but this indicates the limit of 
America's service to Mexico in this respect. 

Taking a broad view of the matter, the railroads entered 
Mexico as they entered China, Japan, and Borneo, by virtue 
of the necessities of that eternally expanding system of exploi- 
tation known as international capitalism. As far back as 1861 
Mexico had been marked out for prey by the capitalist cabals 
of Europe and the United States. Mexico, however, could not 
be efficiently exploited without adequate means of communica- 
tion and transportation — hence the railroads. That is all. 

Let us now examine the next great achievement of President 
Diaz in the field of railroad development — the Tehuantepec 
railroad. 

In the year 1889 Diaz signed a contract with an English 
financier, Edward McMurdo, for the construction of a national 
railroad between the ports of Coatzacoalcos on the GuK of 
Mexico and Salina Cruz on the Pacific seaboard, a distance 



THE RAILROADS 337 

of one hundred and fifty miles, with the enormous subsidy of 
$13,500,000.* No less than ninety thousand dollars per mile! 
Such largess, it might be imagined, would have resulted at 
least in a well-built road, and in the provision of adequate roll- 
ing stock. On the contrary the road was built of the most 
wretched material, and by the year 1890 scarcely any of the 
necessary equipment had been installed. As a matter of fact 
McMurdo had expended no more than $2,000,000 on its con- 
struction, the remaining $11,000,000 constituting a handsome 
profit for himself, for Porfirio Diaz, and the small coterie of 
financiers and politicians immediately concerned in the trans- 
action. More than $13,500,000 had been squandered on this 
project, still it was p)erfectly useless for commercial purposes. 
Diaz now gave a fresh contract for its completion to another 
English contractor, Wheetman D. Pearson, afterward known 
as Lord Cowdray. By the terms of this agreement the latter 
received not only a cash subsidy of $15,000,000, but a franchise 
to oi>erate the road for his own benefit for fifty -one years ! In 
due time the road was made commercially possible at an actual 
outlay of about $6,000,000, the remaining $9,000,000 consti- 
tuting, as before, another handsome profit for all parties con- 
cerned. In addition to this, for the purpose of subsidizing a 
shipping line to connect with the road, Pearson obtained au- 
thorization from Porfirio Diaz to raise a loan of $17,500,000 
backed by government securities, but to be used at his own dis- 
cretion. To-day practically the entire Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 
with its suj>erb agricultural lands, vast oil fields, not to speak 
of the railroad, is the private property of Wheetman D. Pear- 
son in partnership with the entire Diaz family — the well- 
known "Pearson Syndicate." 

As with the atrocities perpetrated upon the agrarian democ- 
racy and the industrial proletariat by the Diaz government, 
so with these colossal peculations committed upon the national 
treasury by this government, typical instances alone can be 

*See Luis G. Labastida's "Leyes Fiscales," p. 49. 



338 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

cited. The full narrative would require volumes. We have 
said enough, we think, to indicate the exact value of the claim 
that to Diaz personally was due the introduction and develop- 
ment of Mexico's railroad system. Not a rail was laid nor a 
sewer built, nor a harbour dredged in Mexico in all these years 
that was not a mere pretext for the unbridled plundering of the 
people. And it must be remembered the labour employed 
upon these works was in effect slave labour, lashed, starved, 
used up, and flung to the dogs. 

These much lauded railroads and government enterprises 
cost the nation unnumbered millions procured only by the most 
extortionate taxation. Not a dollar of foreign capital was used 
in financing them. They were wrought out by the toil of the 
common people and financed by the money of the common 
people. Even so, for every million dollars expended in actual 
construction at least three million dollars was wasted in 
bribery and embezzlement. And as if this were not enough, the 
Diaz government used these enterprises as a pretext for raising 
foreign loans to the value of $600,000,000, not a dollar of which 
ever found its way to the public service. 

In 1909 the colossal railroad frauds of the Diaz regime reached 
their climax. In that year the government effected a merger 
of most of the railroads in Mexico and acquired a major interest 
in them at the enormous figure of $230,458,000; in other words, 
the roads which had been built by the nation's labour, and paid 
for by the nation's money four times over, were now sold back 
to the nation at an enormous excess valuation ! 

It was a shrewd stroke apart from the financial aspect. The 
common people, imbued with the traditions of Juarez, ac- 
claimed this nationalization of the railroads with great enthusi- 
asm; while the whole civilized world regarded it as a vindica- 
tion of the patriotic statesmanship of Porfirio Diaz ! But what 
is still more important, it semi-officially entrenched the Mexican 
Government as the financial partner of the American railroad 
corporations, who held most of the minority stock. 



THE RAILROADS S39 

The exact strategical value of this semi-oflScial alliance be- 
came clearly evident when President Taft rushed the American 
army to the border at the outbreak of the present revolution 
in Mexico. Fortunately the American people by 1910 had 
partially awaked to the real condition of affairs in Mexico, and 
the intended invasion on behalf of Porfirio Diaz and American 
*'Big Business" failed to materialize, but it might easily have 
happened otherwise. In connection with the nationalization 
of the Mexican railroads the Mexican silver money was con- 
verted to the gold standard for the benefit, not of the nation, 
but of the speculators, an operation entailing another vast ex- 
penditure of more than $230,000,000. 



No account of the Diaz regime could be complete without 
some reference to the sinister group of able men who guided his 
policies, well known in recent times as the "Scientificos." 
During the early 90's the speculator-politicians who formed the 
real brains of the Diaz government organized themselves into a 
definite party, self-styled with admirable wit — the Scientificos. 
It was these men who ruled the country and directed the vast 
predatory operations upon the lands of the agrarian democracy, 
upon the public resources and the national treasury. To them 
Diaz was merely a strong-armed servitor, who in return 
for a share of the spoils faithfully performed the rough 
work of massacre, debauchery, murder, enslavement, private 
assassination, and imprisonment which their operations neces- 
sitated. In touch with all the great world centres of specula- 
tion, in complete control of the machinery of government, they 
held the nation and its wealth at their mercy, and they made 
the most of their opportunity. There was not a profitable 
enterprise in all Mexico in which they failed to take a hand. 

These were the men who, with the assistance of Diaz, cre- 
ated "Barbarous Mexico" and the bloody revolution of 1910. 
Shrewd as they were, they failed to notice the coming storm. 



340 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

and when it broke they failed altogether to recognize the only 
recourse left to them if they would save their social system from 
disruption. With the $80,000,000 which lay idle in the treas- 
ury at that time, they could easily have subdivided and have 
irrigated the government lands, and have sold them to the 
peons at a small profit on long instalments. Such a course as 
a temporary expedient would have ended the revolution in 
twenty-four hours. Fortunately they were not astute enough 
to see that half a loaf is better than no loaf — fortunately, we 
say, for, in spite of the fact that at the moment of writing a 
hundred thousand peons have lost their lives fighting for the 
lands which plain business common sense would have restored 
to them, feudalism will be overthrown, not bolstered up by a 
system of government land distribution on a merely "reform" 
basis. 







5 > 






3 <^ 

O t< 

11 



0.2 ^ 



CHAPTER XXIV 
THE REVOLUTION OF 1910-1914 

NEVER for a moment since Diaz came into power in 1876 
had the spirit of revolt ceased to fire the hearts of the people. 
Its manifestation had been repressed but the spirit lived on and 
grew stronger with the passing days until in the early 90's it 
found definite expression in the formation of the "Junta Rev- 
olucionaria del Partido Liberal Mexicano" (Revolutionary 
Committee of the Mexican Liberal party). Mexico under 
Diaz was no place for revolutionists, as the fate of Carrion, 
Santa Maria, and a thousand propagandists had already at- 
tested. Accordingly the group of Intellectuals who comprised 
the Revolutionary Committee removed from Mexico to the 
United States, and established their headquarters at St. Louis, 
Missouri. Here they proceeded to publish the official organ of 
the party, Regeneracion, circulating it widely among the Mexico 
peons and refugees resident in the United States, and ship- 
ping it in quantities to Mexico for secret distribution among the 
people. 

A movement such as this, which had for its avowed object 
the enforcement of the Constitution of 1857 in general, and the 
restoration of the agrarian democracy in particular, naturally 
called for prompt suppression at the hands of Diaz and the 
Scientificos. Such a suppression, however, was not an alto- 
gether easy matter. Up to the year 1910 literally millions of 
dollars was expended by the Mexican Government in its efforts 
to stamp out this revolutionary organization, with only very 
partial success. 

341 



842 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

At the same time the Seientificos played into the hands of 
the Roman Church, with the result that Mexico was fined more 
than a million dollars in the matter of the restitution of the long 
cancelled Pious Funds formerly paid by IMexico to the Church 
in California for the upkeep of the missions to the Indians. 
The matter was arranged in this wise: Having acquainted 
President Roosevelt with their intention, the Seientificos pro- 
ceeded to suggest to the Church in California that they enter a 
claim against Mexico for the restitution of the Pious Funds. 
It mattered not, of course, that the payment of these funds had 
been legally cancelled by the Constitution of 1857 and the 
Leyes de Reforma. Accordingly the Church lodged a petition 
with President Roosevelt to present their claims to Mexico. 
President Roosevelt complied and met with a polite demur from 
the Mexican Government. To pay the claim would be un- 
constitutional, said the Seientificos; they would agree, however, 
to arbitrate the matter before the Hague Tribunal. At The 
Hague the representatives of the Church in California, oflBcially 
supported by the United States, argued their case for several 
days. The Mexican delegate spoke only a few minutes. 
The solemn farce ended in the sentencing of Mexico to recognize 
the Pious Funds, and to pay the Church of California arrears of 
$1,420,682 due on that fund and $43,050 annually in perpet- 
uity! 

As a flash of lightning illumines the murk of the storm, the 
strike of Cannanea in 1906 suddenly illumined the situation, 
revealing on the one hand the solidarity of the Mexican people 
in their sympathy for the spirit of revolt manifested in the 
strike, and on the other, the antagonistic attitude of certain 
elements of the American people toward that spirit of revolt 
as manifested in the applause with which they greeted the 
massacre of the miners. The Liberal junta thus had a double 
task before it, not only to educate the Mexican people in their 
rights and organize them into an effective weapon of revolution, 
but to educate the American people to the real issues involved 



I 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1910-1914 343 

In that revolution, and thus to forestall the possibility of Amer- 
ican intervention in Mexico should the revolution succeed in its 
objects. Against this task of the Mexican patriot, Theodore 
Roosevelt directed the whole weight of the federal forces. 

Pursuant to orders from Washington, United States Secret 
Service men threw the Mexican revolutionists into jail at St. 
Louis, Missouri, San Antonio, and El Paso, in Texas, and upon 
their release pursued them across the continent to Los Angeles, 
where one night, without process of law or warrant of any kind, 
they set upon the leaders, Librado Rivera, Ricardo Flores 
Magon, Antonio Villareal, Manuel Sarabia, and L. Gutierrez de 
Lara, severely beating them and again throwing them into jail. 

As fast as they were released for lack of evidence, fresh 
charges were preferred against them, and finally three of their 
number, Rivera, Magon, and Villareal were sentenced for 
"breach of the neutrahty laws" to the Yuma penitentiary. 

The Socialists of Los Angeles made the cause of these men 
their own and instituted a tremendous campaign of protest 
against this violation of law, American tradition, and humanity 
at the hands of the Chief Executive. The campaign spread 
rapidly to all parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe. 
Hundreds of mass meetings were held which passed unanimous 
resolutions expressing sympathy for the Mexican revolutionists 
and denunciation of the United States authorities. The Amer- 
ican Federation of Labour, the Industrial Workers of the World, 
the Western Federation of Miners, the United Mine Workers of 
America, all oflficially declared themselves in sympathy with the 
Liberal junta and its revolutionary propaganda, and as strongly 
opposed to United States intervention in Mexico, backing up 
their declaration with substantial financial aid to the revolu- 
tionary cause. 

The more Mr. Roosevelt violated the conscience of the people 
by this persecution of the Mexican refugees the more vigor- 
ous grew the campaign of protest. For six years the contest 
was waged, with what effect became apparent when, at the out- 



344 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

break of the Revolution in 1910, the American people showed 
themselves completely opposed to a policy of intervention. 



Long immunity and an atmosphere of adulation had rendered 
Diaz absurdly confident in his power, and in common with the 
Scientificos he remained up to the last moment entirely blind to 
the powerful spirit of revolt among the people. On the other 
hand, he allowed himself to be foolishly irritated by some mild 
attacks made upon him by an academic politician named Fran- 
cisco Madero, a member of the wealthy and influential Madero 
family of Jewish origin. 

To draw this new enemy into the open and test his strength, 
Diaz cunningly announced that he would not present himself 
again as candidate for President. Cunningly, we say, but not 
wisely, for Madero immediately announced himself as candi- 
date for President on a radical platform which insured him 
the support of the whole Mexican common people. 

The audacity of the move caught Diaz off his guard. Unable 
to stem the tide of popular enthusiasm for the new candidate, 
he threw him into jail, and when the elections came due in July, 
1910, had himself proclaimed once more President of Mexico. 

Even then he failed to recognize the real seriousness of the 
situation, and yielding to the pressure of the wealthy and power- 
'• ful Madero family he released Francisco Madero on bail, and 
permitted him to flee the country, confident that he had re- 
ceived sufficient warning to keep him from creating further 
disturbance. In this he was entirely mistaken. Encouraged 
by the tremendous success of his campaign, Francisco Madero, 
before leaving Mexico, drew up and signed a manifesto calling 
upon the people to rise in arms for the defence of the following 
principles : 

1. Effective suffrage (free ballot). 

2. Non-reelection (single term for all executive oflBcers 
throughout the country). 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1910-1914 345 

3. Restoration of the lands of the common people. 

After he had gained the temporary safety of the United 
States he caused this manifesto to be widely distributed through- 
out Mexico. The response was tremendous. Through the 
activity of the Liberal junta the Mexican people were already 
well aware of the strong fraternal feeling of the American labour 
organizations toward them, and their spirit was consequently 
no longer crushed by fear of United States intervention. 

In the month of November, 1910, Castulo Herrera, presi- 
dent of the Boiler Makers and Mechanics' Union, and Pascal 
Orozco, a small commission merchant, started the revolt with a 
handful of mountaineers in Chihuahua. 

It was a fitting thing that the state which saw the massacre 
of Tomochic, Temosachic, and Guerrero should fire the first 
shot in the new struggle against the oppressor. Within a few 
weeks the entire country was ablaze. In Durango, Coahuiia, 
in Zacatecas and Sinaloa, thousands of peons flocked to the 
standard of revolt. In the State of Morelos Emiliano Zapata 
and Eufemio Zapata, his brother, dispossessed small land-own- 
ers, gathered a strong force of peons under their leadership and 
entered upon an uncompromising fight for their liberties, which 
has endured uninterruptedly to the present day. In Guerrero, 
Ambrosio Figueroa headed a similar uprising, while in the old 
revolutionary states of Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, 
where some remnants of the agrarian democracy still remained, 
the people rose to a man. 

Badly armed, poorly organized as they were, these impetuous 
hosts utterly out-manoeuvred and overwhelmed the forty thou- 
sand well-drilled, well-disciphned federal troops sent against 
them. 

Meanwhile the Scientificos had awakened to the fact that 
Madero personally would prove as convenient a tool as Diaz, 
and that his installation as President would put an end at once 
to a condition of affairs that was beginning to prove ruinous to 
their financial operations. Accordingly Porfirio Diaz was dis- 



S4a THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

missed from the presidency. Francisco Leon de la Barra, the 
recognized leader of the Catholic Church, was proclaimed pro- 
visional President in his place, and the nation was summoned to 
a constitutional election. 

This change of tactics was entirely successful, and the peons 
gladly threw down their arms to engage in the political struggle. 
In order to keep some check upon Madero, the Scientificos then 
endeavoured to force the candidacy of Francisco Leon de la 
Barra upon the people as Vice-President; failing in this they put 
him forward as candidate for the presidency itself. The people, 
however, were fully alive to the issue and the first phase of the 
Revolution closed in an incredibly short space of time with the 
election of Madero as constitutional President of the Republic of 
Mexico by the largest popular vote ever cast for a President in 
the history of the country. 

In order to render the subsequent events intelligible it will be 
necessary for us to glance briefly at the character of the new 
President. Francisco Madero was, as we have said, a member 
of the wealthy and influential Madero family, Mexican Jews, 
whose financial interests embraced every field of exploitation, 
including cattle ranches, cotton plantations, mines, factories, 
and banks. His training, association, and traditions were con- 
sequently those of a modern Mexican man of business. 

For money-making, however, as a mode of life he had neither 
aptitude nor inclination. His aspirations were entirely liter- 
ary and political. To the surprise and disgust of his hard- 
headed kinsmen he proved himself again and again utterly in- 
competent to manage the simplest business affairs placed in his 
charge. Indeed he preferred the pursuits of a student and the 
politician to the most alluring commercial enterprise. In pres- 
ence he was ineffectual, in physique frail, and he was afflicted 
with a high falsetto voice which rendered ridiculous his attempts 
at public speech. 

Nevertheless he was lacking neither in personal courage nor 
in a certain energy and shrewdness. Francisco Madero was 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1910-1914 347 

certainly not the man to guide the mighty forces of the Revolu- 
tion of 1910, but with greater maturity and experience, and 
under happier circumstances, he might have made a useful 
member of a strong Liberal government. His book, **The 
Presidential Succession, " which first brought him into the field 
as a mild antagonist of Porfirio Diaz, is above the average as a 
political treatise, but as an expression of the needs of the Mex- 
ican people it is decidedly inadequate. 

Francisco Madero, in short, was that most unhappy of all 
types of politicians — the bourgeois idealist; subsequent events 
proved him to be a political opportunist as well. Betrayed into 
the open by the cunning of Porfirio Diaz, he rashly embraced 
the cause of the people at the moment of their impassioned 
revolt, not from conviction, but as an alluring political expedi- 
ent. Almost without effort of his own he was lifted into power 
by the might of the people, as a straw is lifted by a wave, only 
to be dashed on the rocks of a dilemma created by his own 
insincerity. 

Exponent of the Revolution by the will of the masses he 
found himself in fact merely the deus ex machina of the Scienti- 
ficos. And he had neither the knowledge, will, nor under- 
standing to extricate himself from his false position. 

Such was the man who had ridden into power on the crest of 
the Revolution. A constitutional President under false pre- 
tences, his whole subsequent career was a denial of the popular 
cause. 

Scarcely had he assumed office than he ordered the national 
Treasury to pay his brother, Gustavo Madero, the sum of 
$700,000, ostensibly as indemnity for the expenses he had in- 
curred in the support of the Revolution. There was no proof 
that those expenses had been incurred in total or in part, and 
the indecent haste with which the transaction was consummated 
awakened an ugly suspicion in the public mind. He then pro- 
ceeded to fill his cabinet and all of the important public offices 
with members of his own family, who were also Scientificos. 



348 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

To his uncle, Ernesto Madero, he gave the Secretaryship of 
the Treasury; to his cousin, Rafael Hernandez, he gave the 
Secretaryship of Fomento (department of mines, lands and in- 
dustries) ; to another relative, General Gonzales Salas, he gave 
the Secretaryship of War; and as if this were not enough, he 
proceeded to thrust scores of the lesser members of the Ma- 
dero clan into all the government departments. The Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Calaro, was also a Scientifico. 

In this way he simply built up a new Scientifico machine for 
the plundering of the people, differing from the old only in its 
personal composition. It was the Maderistas instead of the 
Porfiristas that revelled at the board; it was the Standard Oil 
Trust which dominated the foreign support of the Scientificos 
instead of the Southern Pacific and the Pearson Syndicate — 
that was all. The new administration in short, represented 
neither the principles of the Revolution nor even the theoretical 
reformism of Francisco Madero. It represented simply the 
private interests of the Madero clan. It is not a matter for 
surprise, therefore, that throughout this regime not a single 
measure was instituted tending toward the amelioration of the 
vast evils endured by the people since the Diaz cuartelazo of 
1876. 

Instead of disbanding the army and creating a national guard, 
according to the traditions of the Liberal party and the Consti- 
tution of 1857, the Madero cabal fostered and maintained it at 
an enormous expense as a weapon for the suppression of the 
people. Francisco Madero personally repudiated the Leyes de 
Reforma, and extended a cordial invitation to the Clericals to 
take part in the affairs of government; and at a banquet given 
in his honour by a group of the Scientificos he boldly denied he 
had ever promised to restore the lands to the people. 

When the people continued persistently to demand of him 
the restoration of the lands for which they had fought, he en- 
deavoured to dupe them by requesting Congress to authorize 
the "Caja Nacional de.Ahorros" — an institution existing 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1910-1914 349 

only on paper — to raise a loan of $250,000,000 for the purpose 
of buying large tracts of land to be subdivided into small allot- 
ments and sold to the people on instalments! To make the 
mockery more complete he appointed as a committee to handle 
the buying and selling of these lands a group of wealthy land- 
owners, many of them his own relatives. 

The pledge of free ballot suffered the same repudiation at his 
hands. In the states of Puebla, Vera Cruz, Hidalgo, Tamauli- 
pas, Sinaloa, Chiapas, and Morelos he deliberately set aside 
the constitutional elections and imposed governors upon the 
people agreeable to the schemes of his rapacious relatives. 
Surrounded by the old element of corrupt politicians, conscience- 
less peculators, brutal military and scheming prelates, Fran- 
cisco Madero lost every trace of his vaunted democratic ideals 
and became consciously or unconsciously the mere creature 
of that same intolerable oppression and exploitation which had 
provoked the Revolution of 1910. 

The people were not slow to recognize the real state of affairs. 
When the smoke of the Revolution cleared away they found that 
for all their trouble they had changed nothing but a name. 
The cries of "Viva Madero!" became stilled; then out of the 
silence of disillusionment and despair there burst forth a new 
cry, "Viva la Tierra! Viva la Constitucion ! " as full of new hope 
and understanding they unstacked their rifles and prepared to 
continue the fight. They would no longer fight for a man. 
Henceforth they would never lay down their arms till they them- 
selves had consummated that economic reorganization they de- 
manded. 

In this clarified attitude of the Mexican people lies the 
great hope of the present Revolution. No man henceforth can 
ride on their backs into power. They will go forward unwa- 
veringly, irresistibly, until they have established the new social 
order. They have learned democracy's great lesson; that the 
individual cannot assume the functions of the collectivity. 

Thus before the Madero family clique had firmly settled 



350 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

themselves in power new revolts had broken out in the states 
of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Puebla, Vera Cruz, Guer- 
rero, and Morelos. In the latter state the far-sighted Zapata 
had never for a moment relinquished the fight, directing his 
forces as vigorously against Madero as against his predecessor. 

Again the madness of Diaz was repeated. Millions of dollars 
amassed by the late administration lay idle in the national 
treasury. The Madero clique might easily have used this 
wealth in irrigating government lands, subdividing them into 
small allotments and selling them at the cost price, but on long 
instalments to the people. Such a course of action would have 
ended the Revolution at once, enhanced the value of all Mexi- 
can securities, restored the confidence of capital, and ushered in 
an era of capitalist prosperity. It is true that the restoration 
of the lands to the people would have ruined the slave-labour 
and wage-labour markets, that thereafter the industrial ex- 
ploiters would have been compelled by the law of supply and 
demand to pay higher wages to their employees; but the Madero 
clique were unable to see that some alleviation of the general 
condition of the people was inevitable; like Diaz, they were 
unable to recognize that the secure possession of half a loaf is 
better than no loaf at all. Consequently they elected to waste 
the millions in the treasury in embezzlements and peculations, 
and in maintaining a large army in the field against the revolu- 
tionists. 

Thanks to this policy of the Maderos, the policy of Diaz be- 
fore them, the Mexican people are engaged to-day in a clear-cut, 
uncompromising Revolution, and are not, as they might have 
been, the partially contented victims of a capitalistic reform. 



CHAPTER XXV 
THE DOWNFALL OF MADERO 

A SYSTEM of society based upon the disfranchisement, en- 
slavement, and unhmited exploitation of the masses, absolutely 
demands a strong military dictatorship as its form of govern- 
ment, so the whole brunt of maintaining the Madero family in 
control fell upon an army, which could foresee no adequate 
recompense for its efforts. Day after day, week after week, 
month after month, the soldiery were compelled to exert inhu- 
man efforts and to endure the crudest privations against the 
indefatigable guerilla bands of the Revolution. Thousands of 
them perished miserably in open battle and ambuscade, and by 
heat, hunger, and thirst on the march. Those that survived 
could see no other future for themselves than eventual extermi- 
nation. Always in their ears rang the high-piped, hysterical voice 
of Francisco Madero bidding them "Go on! Go on! and su- 
press the Revolution;" and they knew that while they toiled 
across the deserts, or fell stricken in the trenches, the Madero 
family, whom they despised as civilians and Jews — not one of 
whom was a soldier, not one of whom shared their hardships — 
were revelling in uncontrolled possession of the national Treas- 
ury and the loot of office. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
the soldiery became lax, disgruntled, and demoralized, nor that, 
ever and anon, whole bodies of them mutinied and went over to 
the revolutionists. 

Meanwhile the Porfirista Scientificos had equal cause for 
complaint. Crowded from office by the Madero parvenus, 
hampered in their predatory operations by the Revolution, 

351 



352 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

they bitterly blamed Madero not only for disturbing the old, 
prosperous conditions of the Diaz regime, but for failing to 
reduce the country to order. Prominent among these malcon- 
tents were the members of the Diaz family, grouped, as we have 
said, in a gigantic financial combination under the name of the 
Pearson Syndicate. Owners of the vast oil fields of Tehuante- 
pec, and consequently enjoying a complete monopoly of the 
oil business in Mexico, they were not slow to realize that behind 
Madero stood the Standard Oil Company* of the United States 
bent upon breaking their monopoly and capturing their immense 
export trade with Europe. At the same time their plantations 
were deserted, their oil wells idle. To them Madero 's failure 
to suppress the Revolution meant at the best immense financial 
loss; at the worst complete expropriation at the hands of the 
triumphant people. Under the circumstances, therefore, both 
the higher officials of the army and the entire body of the Por- 
firista Scientificos headed by the Pearson Syndicate formed a 
solid phalanx of opposition against the Madero government; and 
they only awaited an opportune moment to strike a deadly 
blow at its power and regain control of the country. 

Meanwhile in the columns of the press the great army of 
American investors in Mexican enterprises became daily more 
insistent for American intervention in Mexico. To give point 
to their outcries, President Taft, while carefully expressing 
himself as averse to intervention, kept up a significant military 
dumb-show on the border, mobilizing and remobilizing troops 
at all points of invasion, and endeavouring, it seemed, to strike 
terror to the hearts of the revolutionists. The American people, 

*The Revolution of 1910 was a spontaneous uprising on the part of the evicted 
agrarian democracy and enslaved industrial proletariat of Mexico. It was not 
incited nor prompted by the Standard Oil Company, as some have averred, nor 
in its earlier and more precarious stages was it financially supported by that 
company. The Standard Oil Company only became a factor in the struggle 
when the success of the Revolution was all but assured; but its influence un- 
doubtedly tended both to stay the hand of United States intervention and to 
hasten the inevitable triumph of the people. Its support of the Revolution was, 
of course, dictated by pure avarice, by a desire to break the Pearson oil monopoly 
in Mexico. 



THE DOWNFALL OF MADERO 353 

however, were on their guard. They not only refused to sanc- 
tion hostilities against Mexico, but offered continual protests 
against the policy of intimidating a friendly people in the exer- 
cise of their constitutional right to revolt. At the same time 
the representatives of the South American republics also made 
it perfectly clear to President Taft that United States interven- 
tion in Mexico would be strongly resented by the South Ameri- 
can peoples, and they did not hesitate to point out that such 
resentment would be likely to find expression in a retaliation 
decidedly injurious to United States commercial interests in 
South America.* Under the circumstances the cause of inter- 
vention waned to extinction. 

Toward the close of 1912 the situation in Mexico became 
acute. The Revolution was steadily gaining ground in all parts 
of the country. Zapata, indeed, with a large force of veteran 
revolutionists hovered on the very outskirts of Mexico City; the 
army, wearied with the perpetual conflict, and disgusted with 
its position as the watch-dog of the Madero faction, was ready 
to mutiny at any moment. In October of that year Felix Diaz, 
countenanced by all the disgruntled element of the old Scien- 
tificos and financed by the Pearson Syndicate, started a cuart- 
elazo in Vera Cruz, but the uprising proved to be ill-timed. It 
failed, and Fehx Diaz was thrown into jail; but every one ac- 
quainted with the situation knew that violent changes were near. 

*Our information on this matter was attained at first hand in a series of per- 
sonal interviews with the ministers of the South American repubhcs at Washing- 
ton; but the antagonistic attitude of the South American repubhcs toward 
United States intervention in Mexico is apparent to any one who cares to watch 
the editorial columns of their press. Not only does this attitude show a daily 
increasing strength, but we have excellent authority for stating that the obnox- 
ious policy exercised by the United States against the South American republics 
generally has created such a sentiment of indignation among them that, in the 
event of United States hostilities with either Mexico or Japan, these coimtries 
would receive not only moral sympathy but substantial and material aid from a 
imited Latin America. Under the Democratic administration of to-day the 
policy of the United States toward her sister republics will undoubtedly undergo 
a radical change, but it cannot be expected that even the decency and good 
sense of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan can immediately eradicate from 
the minds of the South American peoples a hatred of the United States, rooted 
in long years of mistreatment at her hands. 



354 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

The climax came on February 9, 1913. On that date the 
students of the Mihtary Academy of Tlalpan, near Mexico 
City, broke into the prison where General Bernardo Reyes and 
Felix Diaz were confined and set them free. This was the signal 
for a general uprising of the troops stationed in the city. At the 
head of several battalions Felix Diaz marched on the arsenal, 
where the garrison received him with enthusiasm. From that 
moment the cuartelazo was in full command of the situation. 
Mustering some five thousand men, powerfully fortified, and 
equipped with practically inexhaustible supplies of ammunition, 
the Felicistas started what was in reality a sham battle with 
the government troops. For days a raking fire from the oppos- 
ing forces swept the city from end to end. The practised mili- 
tary on both sides received little hurt, but over six thousand 
helpless non-combatants, many of them women and children, 
were slaughtered in the streets. 

At the critical moment General Victoriano Huerta, com- 
mander-in-chief of the government troops, having made 
sufficient stand to save appearances, betrayed the government 
and went over with all his troops to the support of General 
Felix Diaz, making the cuartelazo completely successful. Presi- 
dent Francisco Madero, Vice-President Jose Maria Pino 
Suarez, and Gustavo Madero, leading pohticians of the 
Madero faction, were arrested in the national palace. A few 
days later all three were murdered in cold blood under the con- 
venient "ley fuga.*' Victoriano Huerta was then proclaimed 
provisional President, and an election was announced for Octo- 
ber 17, 1913. 

The only presidential candidates in the field at present 
are Victoriano Huerta, the avowed exponent of the old 
order of Porfiristas, and Venustiano Carranza, the chief 
spokesman and leader of the popular revolt. Felix Diaz, 
after one or two abortive attempts to oust Huerta from 
power, has retired to Havana, and apparently given up the 
contest. 



THE DOWNFALL OF MADERO 355 

The force behind Felix Diaz comprised all the worst elements 
of the old regime. It is these elements and these alone which 
are supporting the provisional President Huerta to-day. Three 
months before his cuartelazo in Mexico City Felix Diaz, as we 
have said, started a premature uprising in Vera Cruz. On that 
occasion the Mexican press, and various reputable organs in 
both England and the United States, charged Wheetman D. 
Pearson, better known as Lord Cowdray, with placing the sum 
of $15,000,000 at his disposal for this purpose, and the charge 
has not been refuted up to date. During the twelve days' 
battle in Mexico City Francisco de la Barra, Garcia Granados, 
Sebastian Camacho, and other prominent reactionaries and 
Clericals, were closeted daily with the American Minister, 
Henry Lane Wilson, while members of the Senate harangued 
the mobs in the streets, inciting them to demand the resigna- 
tion of Madero. 

At the firing of the first shot the American press, as if in an- 
swer to a preconcerted signal, made a tremendous final effort 
to stampede the American people into demanding intervention. 
President Taft again dispatched fresh troops to the border, and 
ordered American gunboats to cruise off the Mexican coast. 
He still professed himself averse to intervention, although pro- 
claiming that if Congress should authorize him to intervene he 
would do so. But the vigorous middle-class revolt which 
marked the year 1912 had just culminated at that time in the 
election of Woodrow Wilson to power; and Congress gauged the 
temper of the country too well to make any such request. 
Again the poKcy of intervention fell before the awakened social 
sense of the people. 

Henry Lane Wilson, the American Ambassador to Mexico, how- 
ever, broke every tradition of diplomacy and brought disgrace 
upon the United States by making scarcely an effort to conceal 
his personal interest in the triumph of the Felicista cause; and 
his ill-advised message to President Taft urging the recognition 
of the Huerta government while the blood of the murdered 



356 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

Madero was yet warm on the ground shocked American de- 
cency to the depths. In short, all the elements, both Ameri- 
can and Mexican, which worked together with Porfirio Diaz 
to wreck the Mexican democracy of the Restoration and 
create a "Barbarous Mexico" raUied to the support of Felix 
Diaz. 

It is not to be supposed that the late President Madero viewed 
with indifference the ill-concealed alliance of the United States 
with his enemies nor the unfriendly attitude of President Taft. 
Indeed, from the day of his accession to the presidency he 
regarded United States intervention in Mexico as a daily 
probability, and he shaped his foreign policy accordingly. 
No more severe criticism of the short-sighted policy of the 
United States toward Mexico could be made than is to be 
found in the simple fact that Francisco Madero in order to 
checkmate that policy was compelled to throw himself into the 
arms of Japan. 

We are well aware of the importance of this statement and of 
its tremendous international significance, but we make it delib- 
erately with full confidence in our authority. Not only did Ma- 
dero enlist the ardent support of the South American republics 
in the cause of Mexico's inviolability, but he entered into nego- 
tiations with the Japanese Minister in Mexico City for a close 
offensive and defensive alliance with Japan to checkmate United 
States aggression. The consummation of these negotiations 
was undoubtedly only prevented by the cuartelazo of Felix 
Diaz. How far they had progressed may be gleaned from the 
following incident related to us personally by one who was the 
intimate friend and confidential adviser of Madero throughout 
his political career, and in whose veracity we have complete 
faith. 

When during the fateful twelve days' battle in Mexico City a 
rumour of American intervention more alarming than usual was 
communicated to Madero, he replied coldly that he was thor- 
oughly anxious for that intervention, for he was confident of the 




Copyright by The International News Service 

THE CLIMAX IN THE 1912-1913 REVOLT 

'The climax came on February 9, 1913. On that date the students of the 

MiUtary Academy of Tlalpan broke into the prison where Gen. Bernardo 

Reyes and FeUx Diaz were confined, and set them free (See page 354) 




Copyright by The International Xews Service 
NON-COMBATANTS IN THE BOMBARDMENT OF MEXICO CITY 
"The Fehcistas started what was in reality a sham battle with the govern- 
ment troops . . . over six thousand helpless non-conbatants 
were slaughtered in the streets" (See page 354) 




Copyright by Undn nderwood, N. Y. 

N(;n-combatants from ojinaca 

\Vomen and children refugees from the battlefield at Ojinaga, camping near 
Presidio, Texas, to which place they fled for safety 




Copyright by Underwood d* Underwood, N. Y. 
FEDERAL LINES OF DEFENCE AT OJINAGA 
General Salazars' men in trenches from which they were driven by the Con- 
stitutionalists after a forty-eight hour conflict, January 2 and 3, 1914 



THE DOWNFALL OF MADERO 357 

surprise the American Government would receive in discovering 
that they had to deal with Japan.* 

Such an alliance would have been fraught, of course, with 
infinite disaster to the Mexican people. Japan in return for her 
protection must have inevitably demanded and received not 
only large land concessions but full economic privileges for her 
subjects in Mexico. Japanese immigration on a vast scale 
would have followed, and the Mexican people would have found 
themselves quietly inundated, dispossessed, and finally eco- 
nomically controlled by an agressive alien race, irresistibly com- 
petent in arms and commerce. 

The fact that the Mexican common people to-day endorse 
this policy of Madero's, and prefer to encounter the manifest 
evils of a Japanese alliance rather than retain the integrity of 
their country under the sufferance of the United States, shows 
to what disastrous extremes the policy of the American pluto- 
cracy has driven them. 

The cuartelazo of Felix Diaz was purely a military affair. 
It simply changed the polite civilian dictatorship of Madero, 
supported by the Standard Oil interests, for the unabashed mil- 
itary despotism of Victoriano Huerta supported by the Pearson 
interests. The revolutionists watched it from afar uninter- 
ested, save in the fact that their enemies were fighting among 
themselves. Certain superficial modifications, it is true, ap- 
peared in the revolutionary movement as the result of the 
change of government. Some peon leaders like Salazar, Or- 
ozco, Chechecampos, and others, went over to the Felicistas, 
hoping thereby to exterminate the Madero faction as the greater 
evil. Some of the Maderistas frankly cooperated with the revo- 

*To what extent Japan had compromised herself with Mexico will probably 
never be absolutely known. It is not without significance, however, that in the 
later years of the Diaz regime Japan made strenuous but unavailing efforts to 
obtain a naval base on the Mexican coast; and that more than four hundred 
Japanese veterans fought in the ranks of Madero's army, while many thousands 
of them who applied for enlistment were only refused by the revolutionary 
authorities out of deference to the prejudices of the Mexican volunteers. 



358 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

lutionists, their old enemies, calling themselves constitution- 
alists. None of these superficial modifications, however, has 
altered in the least the real spirit and purpose of the great 
mass. They are fighting to-day as they fought in the days of 
Hidalgo, of Morelos, of Guerrero, of Gomez Farias, of Juarez, for 
the land, for democracy. They will triumph. They must tri- 
umph. Nothing short of another criminal foreign intervention 
can stay their hand. 

It seems to us that the Mexico of to-day offers a significant 
parallel to the Mexico of the 50's immediately subsequent to 
the downfall of Santa Ana. The Revolution of 1910 is closely 
aldn to the Revolution of Ayutla, which overthrew the dictator- 
ship of Santa Ana, and embodied the ideals of the people in the 
Constitution of 1857. Porfirio Diaz offers a striking resem- 
blance to Santa Ana, while Francisco Madero, the leader of the 
popular revolt, constitutional President by the overwhelming 
voice of the nation, and subsequently traitor to the cause which 
had placed him in power, has his prototype in Comonfort. The 
cuartelazo of Felix Diaz is in all respects similar to the cuartel- 
azo which overthrew Comonfort; and Victoriano Huerta, Ma- 
dero's commander-in-chief who betrayed him to the enemy, 
is only a twentieth century Zuloaga. To-day, as then, the 
people have maintained a protracted struggle for the enforce- 
ment of the constitution and the restoration of the land. To- 
day, as then, the people slowly, but irresistibly, are subduing 
their enemies. 

Ultimately must come a new Restoration — a new birth of 
Mexican democracy — but in happier conditions than in the 
Restoration of Juarez. Then the world-proletariat knew 
little of the struggle of their Mexican brothers. Even had they 
known of that struggle they were impotent to support it. They 
themselves writhed beneath the heel of an omnipotent pluto- 
cracy. To-day how great the change! Plutocracy stands 
bewildered before the steady, resistless march of the world- 
millions of awakened workers. To-day as never before in the 



THE DOWNFALL OF MADERO 359 

history of the class-struggle, the cause of any of the most remote 
sections of the world's workers is the cause of all. International 
capitalism can no longer throttle the freedom of the Mexican 
people with impunity. Their first attempt to repeat the atro- 
cities of the past will involve them in a world-wide grapple with 
the modern army of liberty. They are aware of it. If the work- 
ers of the world are true to their trust, the heroic struggle 
for democracy maintained by the Mexican people for the 
past one hundred years will end, and that shortly, in superb 
accomplishment . 

A DISPATCH FROM THE FRONT 

Hermosillo, Sonora, 

December, 1913. 

At this time of writing the entire states of Sonora, Chihuahua, 
Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi, Morelos, and Puebla, and the larger 
part of the states of Guerrero, Michoacan, and Durango are in 
complete control of the Constitutionalists. In these vast areas 
the federal forces are either wiped out or rendered impotent, 
and the peons are at last in full possession of the land. 

This restoration of the land to the people has arisen irresist- 
ibly — and one might say, mechanically — out of the necessi- 
ties of the case, and often against the will and interest of the 
more reactionary leaders who have imposed themselves upon 
the Revolution. As the Constitutionalist forces advanced from 
district to district, the landlords fled before them, leaving flour- 
ishing estates and ungarnered crops ownerless and unprotected. 
The revolutionary government — hard pressed for provisions 
and funds — was compelled to confiscate these lands and their 
crops for the maintenance of the campaign and the sustenance 
of the people. The peons — suddenly conscious of their mas- 
terless condition — willingly harvested the crops and resowed 
the land on behalf of their brothers in the field. And, having 
done so, they consider themselves to-day the owners of these 



360 THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 

lands and stand prepared to defend their proprietorship, rifle in 
hand. 

With the progress of the Revolution and the restoration of 
the lands there has arisen among the peons a clear class- 
consciousness which daily grows more defined and aggressive; 
and this clarified attitude of the peons toward their own needs 
and their own powers is guarantee enough that, whatever may 
be the actions of their leaders, they themselves will never be 
diverted from their central purpose — the democratization of 
the land. 

THE END 



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